Solution
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: In the final part of the Eclipse, Reconciliation, Solution trilogy, Spock travels to Earth with his bondmate Christine Chapel in search of a cure for his blindness. This is still a WIP.
1. Prologue

Christine Chapel was very happy with her current mode of waking in the morning.

On the ship she had woken at a rigidly preordained time every morning, as the cold beep-beep-beep of her alarm clock shrilled into the air. She had gone through the motions of morning ablutions before she felt completely awake, pulled on her uniform, attended to hair and make up, and, almost every morning, somehow fitted breakfast into some part of the routine; mostly so that McCoy did not lecture her every morning about eating properly.

Here, waking was an entirely different experience.

Despite Spock's care to find a house in a cooler area of Vulcan the heat was still comparable to a hot summer's day back home on Earth, and the nights were correspondingly warm. She slept without clothing under nothing more than a thin sheet, while Spock lay under a layer of blankets, with Sacha, Spock's guide dog, lying panting at the foot of the bed. Spock rose before she did, almost invariably, and let her continue to sleep while he went to the kitchen and prepared breakfast. She woke to the scent of coffee, and to the quiet clink of a plate containing waffles or pancakes, or simple toast or cereal being put down beside the bed.

At first she had been amazed that Spock could cook pancakes to perfection without the advantage of sight, but since they had come here he had insisted on doing almost all the cooking. He had learnt the skills months ago during his initial rehabilitation course, and although he rarely got the chance to cook on the ship, he had forgotten none of the advice or techniques.

'You spoil me, you know,' she murmured sleepily as she rolled over to the sight of two steaming mugs of black coffee and a plate of muffins. 'I'll get fat.'

'I have presented you with plain toast or cereal every alternate day this week,' Spock reminded her, regaining his position in bed beside her. 'I have been wanting to attempt the muffins. It is my mother's recipe. I have not made them since – ' He raised an eyebrow, the length of time startling him as it came into his memory. 'Since before I joined the _Enterprise_, I believe.'

'I bet chocolate chips aren't easy to come by here,' she said, splitting one of the muffins and watching steam rise in pale swirls. Tears of chocolate were melting into the light, airy sponge.

'I had my mother send them,' Spock said, picking one up himself and sniffing it delicately. He nodded approval, and took a bite.

'Just like mother used to make?' she asked with a smile.

'Not quite,' Spock said honestly, 'but they are not unpleasant. I think I have, at least, honoured the recipe.'

She tasted one herself, and smiled.

'Spock, if these are not quite as good as your mother's, I'll have to taste hers one day. These are exquisite!'

Spock's eyebrow arched. Christine had grown to interpret over the years the many different variations of meaning that Spock managed with the movement of one eyebrow, and this one definitely meant pleasure.

'Will you make me some Vulcan breakfasts some day?' she asked him.

'Of course,' Spock nodded. 'Tomorrow I will fix you _j'la_, if you will assist me today in purchasing the ingredients. I think you will like it.'

'It's your first appointment at Gol tomorrow, isn't it?' she asked him

Spock turned towards her in the bed, reaching out to trace his fingers over her bare shoulder. There was the smallest amount of tension just perceptible in the muscles beneath her smooth skin.

'My first appointment,' he nodded. 'But I will have time to prepare breakfast before we leave. You are aware that I shall be required to stay?'

'I knew it might be necessary,' she nodded.

'I was contacted by an adept yesterday. They propose my staying at Gol for the first week, in order to have instruction available to me at any time. After that time, appointments will be arranged if or as needed.'

'You'll be all right?' she asked.

Spock gave her a faint smile, reaching out to touch her cheek.

'You know me better than that, Christine,' he said. 'I will be perfectly fine.'

'Good,' she said, then repeated a little more slowly, 'Good…'

'Your tone does not suggest _good_,' Spock pointed out.

'Oh, no, it's nothing,' she said with forced carelessness. 'It's – just going to be a long week without you…'

'Tell me your fears, Christine,' he said, wishing, as always, that he could see the expressions on her face that spoke of what she was thinking. Was this how most humans felt when faced with a Vulcan's impassive countenance? he wondered.

'My fears,' she repeated with a small, nervous laugh.

He reached out a hand to cup her cheek.

'Yes. Those fears that I can feel running like snakes in the surface of your mind. You may not mention them, but they are not hidden to me, Christine.'

He felt her cheek tense and change shape as she smiled.

'My fears,' she said again, in a voice that still held a tremor under a forced lightness. 'My fear, Spock – my one fear – is that you will go, as you need to do, to Gol, and you will spend a week under the instruction of men who think that love is illogical – especially love for a human – and that you will discover yourself that you don't need me after all, and you will come back here, and tell me something that I – can't bear to hear.'

'Christine,' he said, stroking his fingertips over her temples. He could feel the slight pulsing of her heartbeat there, and feel underneath the rippling currents of her thoughts. 'Christine, _no_ Vulcan believes that love is illogical. Sometimes unnecessary, yes. Sometimes a distraction, or better left well alone. But love leads to stable relationships, and mutual support, and the procreation of children. No sane race would reject it.'

'But – koon-ut-kal-if-fee…'

'If you mean childhood bonding, and the cementing of that bond at the first coming of the male's – Time…' he said awkwardly. 'That almost invariably _leads_ to love. No Vulcan could be so intimately bonded with one, and not develop a feeling of affection.'

'And T'Pring?' she asked, ever reluctant to bring up the subject of Spock's intended bondmate.

Spock's eyebrow rose. 'Whether by dint of my human heritage, or mutual incompatibility, it was unlikely that that bond would ever have reached the required depth. T'Pring cemented her own bond with Stonn at his first Time, since he had not been joined. Not all children are bonded in such a way – it happens far more often in privileged families, in which some attempt is made to preserve the blood-line. T'Pring is very intelligent, and of a good family, and, superficially, was an excellent match. But our own bond was never worked at, never nourished. Perhaps if it had been, T'Pring would now be my wife, and I would love her, and find her a useful and interesting companion. But – I am glad that sometimes history does not unfold as it is intended.'

'And – me?' she asked in a small voice.

'How can you ask me that question?' Spock said, letting a little of his mind flow into hers. '_You_ are my bondmate. You are the bondmate that I chose, of my own free will. I did not choose you as an able assistant in my blindness. I had been blind for many months before our relationship developed. If the adepts of Gol help to restore calm and logic to my mind as regards my blindness, that can only improve our relationship, never harm it.'

He touched his fingers more firmly to her cheek and temple, letting a sense of his thoughts and feelings enter her mind. Then he removed his hand, and rested it on her shoulder instead.

'Are your fears settled?' he asked, with a hint of humour on his face. 'May we enjoy our breakfast now?'

'My fears are quite settled,' she said with a smile as he passed her coffee. 'Anyway,' she added mischievously. 'A week of peace might do me good…'


	2. Chapter 1

To Spock, Gol had always been a place of rusty rocks, towering spires of stone, and jagged mountain peaks standing out harshly against the blazing red sky. The settlement itself was situated on a plain high up in a protective bowl of mountains. It had been used even before Surak's logic reforms as a place of religious retreat, and it was perfectly protected from the whims of the passionately aggressive Vulcans who had inhabited the planet at that time.

To reach the place without a transporter required either an arduous trek over mountains and through passes, or a stunning flight over the mountain range, past peaks adorned with snow and bronzed with the light of the Vulcan sun. At sunset and dawn the folds of rock picked up a whole palette of colour ranging between copper, crimson and gleaming gold at the warmer end of the spectrum, and deep Prussian blues, turquoise and dark green at the cooler end. In the absence of any overwhelming impact of civilisation, the most impressive aspect of the place was its visual impact.

Spock stepped out of the skimmer today into an almost silent space, the location marked only by the sound of wind blowing sand against stone. He unfolded his cane, and it touched the solid rock beneath his feet with a sharp tap, with no structures close enough to send back echoes.

'The ground's level enough,' Christine said, coming to his side. 'There's a good path.'

Spock nodded, moving his cane over the smooth ground in front of him. These paths had been worn smooth under millennia of feet treading their ways.

'Yes, I recall that the paths of Gol are well maintained,' he nodded. 'Do you find the atmosphere sufficient?'

'For now,' she nodded. 'I took my tri-ox before I got out. The air's thinner than it is lower down, but at least it's cooler. And – Gol is beautiful,' she added in a more confidential tone. 'You never told me how beautiful it would be.'

Spock sighed. He did not feel inclined to discuss the visual aspects of his surroundings. He was not even certain if his visual memory of Gol was correct any more, or whether it had been distorted by a combination of the passage of time and his own increasing difficulty at recalling precisely what images sight had presented him with in the past. Increasingly his memories were overlain and confused with remembered sensory input that was not visual, and the visual aspects were adulterated with memories of other sights. His regret at not being able to see, or even correctly remember, the beauty of Gol and the beauty of every other sight was one of the reasons why he was here.

'We must go to the prelate's office,' he said. 'There, my stay will be arranged – and you can leave me.'

She touched a hand to his cheek, and he felt her smile through the touch.

'Would it be acceptable for me to kiss you?' she asked softly. 'There's no one watching.'

Spock's face softened. 'It would be more acceptable for you to kiss me than for me to kiss you,' he admitted. 'But since you assure me that we are in privacy…'

He touched his hand to the back of her head, drawing her forward and touching his lips to hers in a brief, chaste, but deeply meant kiss, the gentle touch of his fingers through her hair just as intimate as the touch of his mouth on hers.

'I will be fine,' he told her firmly as he withdrew. He folded his cane and attached it to his hip. 'I have come here to heal, not to suffer. Now, my case,' he said, finding the rear door of the skimmer and taking the case from it.

'Oh, let me carry that,' Christine said quickly, but Spock kept his hand clenched firmly on the handle.

'There is no need,' he said. 'As you pointed out, the paths are quite predictable. I don't need to use the cane. Now, if I recall correctly, we must take the left hand path from the landing area. The prelate's office is about two hundred metres away, on the left.'

''''''''''''''

'Commander Spock,' Prelate Shavar said on his entrance to the office. There was such an absence of emotion in his tone that Spock had no doubt that here was one who had truly achieved Kolinahr. 'And your guide?'

'Christine Chapel,' Spock said, feeling impelled to keep his answers as pertinent and logical as Prelate Shavar would expect. But then he added, 'My guide, but also my bondmate.'

'Of course,' Shavar said, with no hint of surprise or judgement in his tone. 'It is time to leave behind outer distractions, Spock,' he added.

Spock turned his head towards Christine, and she nodded.

'I'll be going then,' she said, trying to keep any sense of emotion from her own voice. She touched her hand to Spock's arm, in lieu of the kiss that she wanted to give him. That one illicit kiss by the skimmer would have to suffice. 'Success, Spock,' she said softly.

Spock nodded, touching his fingers briefly to hers, grateful for her tact before the prelate. There was no need to say anything further. He had arranged everything with her for his return before leaving the skimmer. She left, and Spock turned back to the prelate.

'I welcome you to Gol, Spock,' he said. 'Now. I will escort you to your chamber, and see that your needs are known. When you have arranged your belongings, you may meet your instructor.'

'Of course,' Spock nodded.

'You must touch me for guidance. Am I correct?'

'Correct,' Spock said briefly.

He knew that the prelate would normally avoid touching another, but he also knew that as a Vulcan adept he would have no logical objection to the contact in a case of real need. He had grown used to being guided by the trail of mental emanations that a human left, but this man's control of his thoughts was so perfect that Spock could barely sense him other than by his scent and the noise he made as he moved.

He hesitated, thinking of his cane and his luggage. He did not trust the prelate's guidance as he would trust Christine's.

'Prelate, may I presume to ask you to carry my case?' he asked respectfully. 'I have a cane to assist me in the detection of my surroundings, but I cannot carry my case if I use it and touch your arm.

'It is logical,' the prelate said flatly, removing the case from Spock's grip.

Spock unfolded his cane and touched it lightly to the ground.

'Why have you come to Gol, Spock?' the prelate asked as he came to Spock's side.

'I need guidance,' Spock said, reaching out to touch his arm with the tips of his fingers, declining to grip on to it as he would ordinarily in deference to his guide.

Neither Vulcan reacted to the irony of that statement, but the adept said, 'Indeed, Spock. Your life is far from the normal course of most of our people.'

'I need guidance regarding my acceptance of my blindness,' Spock clarified. 'In other areas of my life, I am content.'

There was a brief silence. 'Blindness is an uncommon affliction on Vulcan,' the prelate commented after a moment.

'Blindness is an uncommon affliction throughout the Federation,' Spock nodded.

'It is fortunate that we have one elder here who has some experience with such cases,' the man continued. 'Solek has assisted two other Vulcans through sight loss. Your psychology is perhaps more – specialised,' he added.

'You refer to my parentage?' Spock asked in a level tone as they stepped out from relative cool to the blasting heat of outside. He found himself wondering briefly if Christine had yet left. He would have been able to see the landing area from here, he was certain.

'You cannot deny, Spock, that you lead a life most unconventional for a Vulcan,' Shavar said, with no hint of either censure or approval.

'Perhaps,' Spock nodded, choosing not to continue to discuss his biological heritage or his subsequent life-choices. 'You say that the elder is named Solek. Would that be the Solek who taught at ShiKahr twenty-three years ago?'

'Solek did teach at ShiKahr in his former life. He has since achieved Kolinahr.'

Spock's eyebrow rose. It was highly probable that this was the same Solek who had instructed him in the control of desire when he was fifteen. The man had been in his late sixties at that point. It would be interesting to meet him again, after so much had changed in both their lives.

''''''''''''''

Spock sat alone in his chamber, heat from the window striking his back. It had taken very little time to organise his few possessions or to familiarise himself with the spartan room. There was little more than a bed, chair, and chest of drawers in the room; only those things that were necessary. There was a communal bathroom just a few yards down the corridor, with toilets and a number of washing bowls. The refectory would be shown to him later, at meal time. His difficulty did not lie in his new surroundings so much as in his intense dislike of these first few hours and days when he was not absolutely certain of what would lie under the reach of his hand, or what his feet might encounter as he walked. That short time of fumbling and groping and not _knowing_ all he needed to know about his surroundings was always disconcerting, to say the least.

Footsteps outside sharpened his attention, and he raised his head as someone knocked on the door.

'Come,' he said flatly, and the door opened.

'Spock,' said a voice; an aged, male, very Vulcan voice.

'Master Solek!' Spock said, rising to his feet, not quite able to keep the tone of pleasant surprise from his voice.

The identity of his instructor had almost been a certainty, but he had not expected the voice to be quite so familiar. A memory washed over him, of being fifteen, and sitting with Solek in a cool, granite-walled chamber, sunlight piercing through a window at one side of the room and striking the wall on the other side with intense brightness against the dimness of the room around. Solek had been an excellent teacher to him at a time of conflicting emotion and uncertainty over his true path.

'Spock,' Solek said again, coming forward to him until Spock could smell the fabric of his clothes and the subtle scents of his body. 'There is a chasm between the time we last met, and now. You are quite different to the boy of fifteen years.'

Spock nodded succinctly.

'A recruit of Starfleet, I believe – and well-respected, too,' Solek continued.

'I am an officer in Starfleet,' Spock nodded.

Solek intrigued him. Prelate Shavar had said that he had achieved Kolinahr, but Spock suspected that Solek's achievement of that elevated state of being was now some years past. There was a mellowness to his tone and attitude that hinted of another stage beyond the state of total logic – a more complete acceptance of one's emotional influences made possible by the control with which Kolinahr graced the scholar.

'Your blindness,' Solek began without further preamble. 'My information is that it was inflicted upon you abruptly, and with violence, almost nine months ago. Am I correct?'

'An explosion,' Spock nodded. He held his hands very still at his sides, aware that Solek would be watching him for any signs of an emotional response. The memory of that explosion, although just a memory, still had the power to disturb him. 'It was a trap set by a terrorist faction. Blindness was instantaneous.'

'Do you understand that we will need to examine that event very closely in your mind?' Solek asked. 'Such an examination may be painful to you.'

'Emotional pain is hardly relevant, if the examination is necessary,' Spock said flatly.

'Ah, Spock,' Solek said slowly. 'Emotional pain is the very reason why you are here. There is no logic in attempting to hide your emotions from me. Together we will discover them, and together we will learn how to control them. Do you remember nothing of our lessons so many years ago?'

A flash of memory again. Solek's hand touching his face, Solek touching thoughts and feelings that Spock would have revealed to no one else. The sun, bright and hot, burning onto his cheek through the window as Solek taught him how to move through his feelings with calmness and equanimity. That brightness that caused his eyes to wince shut, that was no more than a memory to him now despite the fact that the sun must be shining with equal brightness through the window behind him. He felt a pulse of jealousy for his former self, and suppressed it quickly.

'I remember a great deal about our lessons,' Spock told his old instructor. 'But – we both of us have changed since that time.'

'Your mind, Spock,' Solek said, taking another pace closer to him. 'May I?'

Spock bowed his head, once, in a solemn nod, clasping his hands behind his back to show his trust of Solek's actions.

Solek lifted a hand to Spock's face, and touched his fingers to the traditional meld points. In the second of that first touch Spock considered the tips of those fingers that he could feel on his skin, comparing the feeling of that light touch to the touch of two decades ago. Solek's hands were perhaps a little cooler, and the skin a little dryer – but Solek's mind traced a path into Spock's own thoughts as easily as a trickle of water flows along a long-dried watercourse. A moment after Solek had entered Spock's mind it was as if no time had passed at all.

Spock deliberately relaxed his barriers, allowing his thoughts and feelings to seep towards Solek's touch. This was very much a one-way meld. Solek's own responses were kept shielded, allowing Spock's thoughts to pass unadulterated into his mind.

Spock had expected any instructor probing his mind to recoil from what he found, but as Solek lowered his hand he simply said, 'Remarkable. Your mental processes have a grace to them that few possess. I would suggest that you are an excellent candidate for Kolinahr.'

Spock raised an eyebrow.

'I have no desire to achieve Kolinahr,' he said.

'No,' the man said, with no trace of emotion. 'Often those who wish to achieve it are unsuitable for the task, whereas those who do not display such ambition are suitable but unlikely to pursue the discipline. It is a conundrum. But our task at this time is acceptance and control of emotion, specifically in response to your blindness. I suggest that we begin today with words. Tomorrow we may move on to a more intimate examination of your responses.'


	3. Chapter 2

Christine returned to a house that felt curiously empty, despite its small size. She stood for a moment in the doorway, her eyes roaming across the vacant room, then stepped in, and closed the door. At the noise of the latch there was a scrabbling from an overlooked corner, and Sacha came panting over to her with languid steps and a limply wagging tail, looking forlornly behind Christine for Spock.

'Oh, he'll be back in a week,' she said briskly, ruffling the fur on the dog's head. 'Anyway,' she continued over her shoulder, walking over to a panel on the wall. 'At least we can turn up the air conditioning for a bit – spend a week without getting heat stroke.'

Sacha gave a disgruntled groan, and went to lie under the vent that had begun to spew out increasingly chilled air.

'I don't know why you're complaining,' Christine muttered. 'You get a week off duty, but I've got work to do.'

She crossed to the computer terminal without hesitation. Much as she might complain about working, she would rather work than sit aimlessly in a chair missing Spock. He would be back in a week, and she had put off her daily check of the quadrant's medical journals and reports in order to take him to Gol. Just skimming and dismissing the vast amounts of information could take hours, and it would certainly stop her from dwelling on Spock's absence.

They had not engaged in research into other methods of treating Spock's form of blindness since the discovery of the disruptor treatment that had seemed so hopeful. There had never been any need. But now she was finding out just how little there was out there amongst the reams of research that were diverted to her terminal. The type of blindness was relatively rare – rare relative to the population of the galaxy – but it also affected a large number of individuals, no matter how small their percentage was in relation to the population around them. You could have filled a large town with sufferers of Spock's peculiar form of blindness. A lot of people suffering, but not, it seemed, a lot of people researching treatment methods, especially since the disruptor treatment pioneered on the _Enterprise_ suited so many people very well. There was an awful lot of material relating to blindness, but very little of it had any pertinence in Spock's case. Still, it all had to be examined before it was dismissed…

Two hours later she was still sitting at the monitor, sipping coffee, her eyes prickling with tiredness from staring at the screen for so long as she scrolled through the various medical journals and reports that had come through to her terminal that morning. But then something flashed up on the screen…

_Adaptation of McCoy/Spock (2268) Treatment for C-Dionyxalide-Partho Blindness, for application to more vulnerable tissue types. Suggestions for refinement._

She leant forward, bringing her face close to the screen as she accessed the abstract, scanning the text for relevance. It seemed relevant. Beautifully relevant.

Where was it? Where was this research based?

Her fingers flew over the keyboard again, and she found her answer.

Dr H. L. Alunan, Royal Institute of Xenobiological Research, London, United Kingdom. Earth.

_Earth…_

They had begun researching almost as soon as the problems with Spock's treatment had been discovered. How had this slipped by? She noted the date at the top of the paper. The research, in tentative, early stages as it was, had only been published fifteen hours earlier. Had she performed this search yesterday it would not have shown up...

Her fingers itched to send a transmission to Gol. But no. There was – no logic – in disturbing Spock. Best to first determine the worth of the research, and whether it applied at all in Spock's case. Best to determine whether Spock would be a viable candidate, whether visiting Dr H. L. Alunan, London, United Kingdom would be of any use. Whether she should start making arrangements for a relocation to her home planet…

She smiled. Once on Earth, with access to transporters and high-speed shuttles, proximity to London would make very little difference. They could stay anywhere on the planet as long as it was near transport links. It was a long time since she had visited home…

She paid the requisite fee without hesitation to access the document, and brought it up on her screen. A mixture of facts and suggestions leapt out at her. _Adaptation for more sensitive tissue types. Early experiments show limited success. 17.38% cell regression in most successful study._ Between the lines, it was obvious that the man was floundering. He had something, some kernel of worth, but the research was in its infancy, and it had a long way to go.

Christine smiled, leaning back in her chair and gazing at the information on the screen. Odd that it should satisfy her, but it did. She had spent a large amount of time focussed exclusively on bio-research before joining the _Enterprise_. She still spent a considerable amount of time engaging in her favourite subject as part of her role on the ship. She had lost count of the times she had stood in the lab alongside Spock or McCoy, an equal in their task rather than simply a useful assistant. Here was another research subject to become immersed in, but it was one that meant so very much more to her than most…

_17.38%…_ Even without improvement, that could mean viable tunnel vision for Spock. It could mean the difference between seeing nothing but a hint of light – and _seeing_.

She thrust aside the spike of excitement. It would not help her to focus on her research. Best not to see the end goal. Best to look at the path immediately ahead of her. She settled down before the computer and began to cultivate an intimate familiarity with Dr H. L. Alunan's research.

''''''''''''''''''''

Spock was halfway through a detailed retelling of the accident that had caused him to lose his sight. Even now, with the memories distant and distorted in his mind, the thought of those few minutes in the _Enterprise_'s phaser control room, and the days and weeks that followed, still caused his chest to tighten with unwelcome emotion.

'Spock,' Solek said eventually, cutting across his words. Spock's distress was palpable to the aged instructor, but it was also crucial to his examination of Spock's responses. 'This is enough, for now. May I?'

Spock steadied himself, pressing his lips together as he attempted to control his ragged emotions.

'Spock, may I touch your thoughts again?' Solek clarified.

He must have been already holding out his hand for the meld, because at Spock's nod his fingers instantly touched Spock's skin.

'No, relax,' Solek urged him, as Spock struggled to draw a blanket of equanimity over his thoughts. 'At this point I don't want you to control. I want to understand precisely how you feel. That is the purpose of this exercise.'

Spock shut his eyes, fighting against everything he had ever been taught to withdraw his attempts at control. He felt the fingers of Solek's mind catching him, supporting Spock's own fraying network of thought even as he examined exactly what was there. Spock was put in mind of a fisherman, feeling through the net that he held, trying to discover precisely where it was that the fish were slipping through.

_ A creative metaphor, _ Solek thought inside Spock's mind. _You were always creative within your own mindspace. But your fisherman is feeling the net. He does not see the holes in its structure? _

Spock's hands moved as he thought again of the fisherman, feeling the imaginary net under his own fingertips. It was a structure of hard knots and loose, frayed lines, and the damage was difficult to perceive because the net was vast and rucked across his knees, and the holes held very little difference in touch to the constructed holes that created the net. A stale scent of salt water and fish rose about him. He had smelt that scent in San Francisco, during his days at the Academy…

_ But you also saw the nets then, _ Solek reminded him. _At no point did you touch them. You _saw_them, at a relative distance. _

Yes, that was true. Spock recalled standing on a narrow pier that jutted out into the water, watching the fisherman who sat on a boat down below, feeding the net through his callused hands. The visual aspects of the scene that came back to him were patchy and distorted. Far stronger was the scent of salt water, and the sound of seals and seagulls, the chatter of tourists, water slapping the side of the boat, the sound of boots on the pier, making a hollow noise on the wood.

_That is quite fascinating, Spock. You regret what you do not see, yet you barely remember sight. _

_I remember what sight gave me, _ Spock thought wistfully. _Freedom, independence, ability... _

Images drifted through his mind – moving with swift surety through an unfamiliar landscape, piloting a vehicle by sight alone, picking up food containers and knowing what was in them without asking another person to label them… Those images were tangled and interwoven with his hand clasped about a human-cool arm, feeling the fabric under his fingers, with hesitating on the threshold of a door, beset with uncertainty over what was outside, with being told, _no, not this mission, Spock, it's too dangerous… Not this planet. The terrain and the natives are unpredictable… Not this time, you can't…_

Solek _almost_ revealed shock at the force of Spock's sudden burst of frustration. Spock's mind leapt to repress the feeling, but he held himself back, and allowed it to flood through his mind and Solek's. Solek accepted the tumult with admirable equanimity, processing and analysing Spock's emotion as if it were no more than a scientific problem. Finally he withdrew his hand and said, 'I understand now, Spock. We may begin to tackle the problem. But I think, for the present, a break would be opportune. We have been working for four hours now. Even the most disciplined of minds can become weary.'

Spock's eyebrow rose. Sunk in the timeless space of meld, he had not realised that so much time had passed. It must be approaching evening. The fierce heat through the window had mellowed into something more muted and gentle, and he imagined that the sun must be nearing the end of its daily journey towards the ragged peaks that surrounded Gol.

'Come,' Solek said, as if he had read Spock's thoughts. 'It is approaching time that the evening meal is served. I will show you the refectory, and we may eat together. We have twenty-three years to discuss, do we not?'


	4. Chapter 3

It was the subtlety of sound at Gol that Spock had found the strangest to process in the first few days. Gradually, since losing his sight, he had moved his appreciation of arts across the sensory field, away from visually oriented fields and more towards auditory ones. He barely read for pleasure any more. Even though he had progressed to reading both Braille and the Vulcan touch language in the most abbreviated form possible, and although his scanner could instantly translate any text, tactile languages were simply too slow and cumbersome compared to his former sight reading speed. Text-to-audio scanners were slow, and could not produce a smooth and correctly intoned reading. Audiobooks were similarly frustrating, with the added annoyance of the reader imbuing the text with their own interpretation of the emotion involved. Unless listening to a play, in which the actors added their own dimension, Spock preferred to make his own judgements as regarded the emotion of the story.

Instead, Spock made use of arts available to his remaining senses. He had increased his library of music to massive proportions, restricting himself neither to genre nor world of origin, and honing his ability to reproduce on the lyre or piano almost anything he heard, bypassing the need for sheet music. He had developed a fuller appreciation of the varying tastes and scents and textures of food and drink, gaining satisfaction from preparing food from a far larger range of ingredients than he had previously concerned himself with. And, perhaps in the greatest contrast to his former life, he had begun to appreciate the rewards of touching those things he had formerly only looked at. Sight was lazy. One glance at an object, and one thought that one knew all there was to be known about it. Touching, it was true, couldn't tell Spock what colour an object was, or if it was patterned or otherwise decorated, but it did reveal weight, material, and any number of tiny imperfections or variations invisible to the careless eye.

At Gol, however, almost all of this had been taken away from him. He was permitted his lyre, and a small number of texts. The monks had not relaxed their strictures in deference to his blindness. He had taken the allowed number of texts but he had not yet turned to them, and had taken his lyre, which had become his sole form of self-amusement. There was little tactile variation in his room, no vast audio-library that he could access, and no opportunity to stimulate the senses of smell and taste beyond the simple fare provided in the refectory. That, perhaps, was for the best, for he found himself appreciating a far more subtle level of interpretation of his surroundings than he was used to in the ever-stimulating environment of the _Enterprise_. Scents called themselves out of the most unpromising of environments. The scent of hot rock and dust varied from the scent of the same thing when cold. The scent of sulphur drifted occasionally past him from the hot springs on the other side of the retreat, detectable to him when his companions were quite unaware of it. He grew to distinguish silent, reticent adepts by their scent alone.

The word _Kaiidth _drifted through Spock's mind.

Essentially, Solek was re-teaching Spock the principles of _Kaiidth;_ in its simplest form, _what is, is_, but in its more complex a combination of discipline and philosophy and mental relaxation that was impossible for most humans to grasp. Spock felt exhausted with struggling against his blindness, and struggling against the emotions that it provoked. Solek was reminding him how to rest, and to accept what he could not control.

He stood at the doorway to the residential complex now with very little frustration in his mind. He had not ventured outside alone in his first days at Gol, although Solek had accompanied him on walks about the exposed rocky flats that Gol was built upon, and he had grown used enough to his presence to follow him largely without touching his arm. This time he was alone, and although he could remember the routes he had taken with Solek, he knew that the terrain of Gol was alternately too treacherous and too featureless to allow him to be confident of walking about far from this doorway without a guide. He should have felt the frustration needling at the back of his mind, and for a moment, he did, but the feeling was very quickly suppressed, thanks to Solek's instruction. By no means was his treatment complete, but it was, at least, helping.

He took another step forward so that he was out of the shelter of the doorway, and the hot mountain wind billowed against his face, bringing with it a scent of dust and varied subtle noises of everyday life at Gol.

_Kaiidth_.

He repeated that simple word to himself and let its layers of meaning sink through his mind. He could not, or should not, stride unassisted about the terrain of Gol, or stand at the edges of the plateau surveying the dizzying spread of the landscape far below. What then could he do?

He moved to a low stone bench close to the doorway and sat on it, letting the heat from the rock spread up through his thighs and body. He laid his palms on the stone, and felt the same heat inching up his arms. No matter how well warmed his quarters on the _Enterprise_, the sheer unavoidable _heat_ of Vulcan was something that he always appreciated. He let his hands relax on the stone, closed his eyes, and allowed his other senses full reign.

There. At first the most subtle sounds of Gol were indistinguishable against the rustle of his clothing and the noise of his breath entering and exiting his lungs, but after very little time his ears began to pick up the multitude of softer, varied sounds. Wind, composed of hot, thin air and sand, striking the turrets and pinnacles of rock that spiked the landscape. Far away to his left he caught the sound of bells chiming a new section of the day in the inner caverns. In the building behind him were quiet, soft-soled footsteps, and murmuring voices, and the sound of robes long enough to brush the floor at times. And all around him, somewhere in the periphery of Gol, were creatures of the air and of the ground calling out with thin, high calls, or flapping or scuttling by.

He did not react to the footsteps behind him, coming out of the residential complex, but they were as obvious to him as a clatter of dropped objects against the subtlety of noise on which he was focussing. Both the gait of the owner and the scents and the noise of breathing were very familiar to him now.

'You're doing well, Spock,' said Solek as he reached him, a definite note of approval in his voice. 'I sense a desire in you to move beyond your confines, but very little frustration or anger.'

'It is often difficult to suppress the desire,' Spock admitted.

Solek's hand touched his arm lightly. 'It is the negative emotions that are most destructive. Everyone must harbour some desire in order to progress in the world. Desire itself is no sin. It is simply something that must be controlled. You obviously controlled the desire to explore this difficult terrain alone.'

Spock nodded, but a small sigh escaped his lips.

'Regret,' Solek nodded. 'Regret looks to the past just as much as your frustration taints the future. You are only living in the present moment, Spock. You have no power to affect that which has happened.'

He seated himself next to Spock.

'You are scheduled to leave us soon. What are your intentions following this course of study, Spock?'

Spock exhaled slowly, considering the question.

'A return to my rented accommodation here on Vulcan,' he said finally. 'A return to – my bondmate.'

'You hesitate to call her that,' Solek pointed out.

'She is human,' Spock felt compelled to explain. 'Some would not ascribe that status to a human.'

'Your father ascribes that status to your mother,' Solek reminded him.

Spock nodded. 'Yes,' he said. He thought of the sharpness and gentleness of Christine's mind, of the soft, cool curves of her body, and the constancy of her presence in his mind. 'And I ascribe that status to Christine.'

'Then there is no logic in reticence. The relationship exists. Embrace it. Doubt will only weaken it. You do not need the wisdom of an adept to tell you that.'

Spock nodded again. 'Very true,' he said. 'Then – a return to my bondmate,' he said with more firmness. 'And thence – ' He exhaled slowly, uncertain of how to classify his further intentions.

'You intend to return to your ship, and your post, do you not?' Solek asked curiously.

'I want to, and am obliged to,' Spock said solidly. 'But I have been granted a period of time to research methods of restoring my sight. Some of that time may be spent off-ship.'

'I see,' Solek replied.

Spock turned his head more towards the aged instructor, feeling Solek's slight shift on the bench as he considered Spock's statement.

'You believe it to be a curious order of things,' he intuited. 'An attempt to reconcile myself to blindness, followed by an attempt to restore my sight?'

'Perhaps,' Solek nodded. 'But I've no doubt your reasoning is quite logical.'

Spock's head lowered, his hands clasped together in his lap. 'Frustration and depression and anger are rather more immediate concerns, more immediately treatable, than my blindness. But the restoration of my sight is a logical aim. No matter how fully I reconcile myself to my condition, I can't pretend that sight is not preferable to almost total blindness.'

'No,' Solek said, as he considered the difference between the two states. 'No, I imagine you cannot.' He was silent for a space, then said, 'I came out here to ask you to accompany me to the meditation chambers, Spock. I want you to attempt meditation using a _v'ahnak_ bell as a focus. It should adequately replicate the benefits of a meditation flame. Some claim it is actually superior.'

Spock stood, letting the tip of his cane drop to the ground. The meditation chambers were deep within one of the subterranean cave systems that riddled the mountainsides surrounding the plateau. There was something immensely reassuring about these cool, silent passages and rooms, and the meditation chambers were the deepest of all of them, built like cocoons in the rock.

'I've heard of the _v'ahnak_ bell and its uses. I anticipate the experience,' he said.

'But, Dr Alunan,' Christine was saying, her fingers, well out of range of the camera, tapping in silent frustration on the side of her chair. 'It really would be very useful if we could actually _see_ your research. If we could be on site and examine what you've got so far.'

'Data thieves,' the man muttered suspiciously. He was hardly looking at his own screen, his attention almost entirely focussed on something off to the left of the computer. 'People wanting to steal my research for their own gain…'

'Dr Alunan, your research is _based_ on Mr Spock's research – and Dr McCoy's,' Christine reminded him, keeping her annoyance as firmly in check as she could. 'We'd hardly be trying to steal it. Everything you're working from begins with results from trials on Commander Spock. To actually have Commander Spock in your lab – '

'Well,' the man began distractedly. 'There is that… There is that… You're his assistant, you say?'

She pursed her lips, then capitulated with a nod. 'His assistant, yes. All we're interested in is a cure for this type of blindness – honestly. That's all we want to achieve. Nothing to do with stealing research.'

He was looking more directly at the screen now, his eyes narrowed and his pale greyish skin flushed with a distinct blueness that indicated his growing interest.

'And you say the treatment failed with the Commander?'

She nodded again. 'The prolonged exposure to low levels of disruptor energy proved to be unfeasible for his tissue type. His body's cells began to break down. We were forced to stop, and the cells in his eyes have begun to recolonise.'

'My research remains my own,' he said, showing very little interest in the details of Spock's unfortunate regression.

'Your research remains entirely your own,' Christine nodded. 'Nothing leaves your lab. All we do is see if we can offer any help. Doctor, would you allow us to at least visit your lab?'

Her meek stance seemed to be working. She could see the relaxation beginning to ripple through his body. Finally, he nodded.

'It would – be interesting to study the Commander at first hand,' he said slowly, more to himself than to her. 'Illuminating, perhaps… Yes,' he said finally, with growing firmness. 'Yes, I will allow you to visit. It will be interesting. Call my secretary to arrange this.'

And with a very un-human abruptness he cut the communication, leaving Christine staring half-gratified and half-bewildered at the black screen.


	5. Chapter 4

Spock closed his eyes, and opened them again. Especially here, deep within the rock chambers of Gol, there was no appreciable difference in what penetrated his obscured vision with that movement. Closing his eyes and opening them was marked by the sensation of his eyelids pressing onto his sclera and irides, and then exposing them to the colder and more gentle sensation of air reacting with moisture. The word _redundant_ passed through his mind. As they were, his eyes were almost totally redundant, a useless vulnerability in his face.

He closed his eyes again and let the heat of his eyelids settle on them. He had been doing this for a long time; opening and closing his eyes and finding no appreciable difference. Often it was not the sight that he missed; it was the lost opportunities for independent existence. But those lost opportunities would not be affected by an emotional response. They existed. He could address them with technology, with further adaptation and an increase in his skills. They would never be totally overcome, but – there was no logic in the shroud of regret and frustration that seemed to follow him through his daily life.

'You are progressing, Spock.'

He barely controlled a start. He had been alone in the room until very recently – of that he was certain. This was a voice he did not recognise, but the woman obviously recognised him. She was standing in the doorway, a few metres away on his left.

'T'Lan,' she said at his obvious confusion. Her robes rustled and swept on the floor as she moved closer to him, bringing with them a faint scent of the fabric, and of the body that filled them. 'Solek has consulted me about your treatment, but we have not yet met.'

'You have observed me,' Spock pointed out. She must have been in his presence before to be able to sense the improvement in his condition.

'Yes, Spock, I have observed you,' she nodded. 'I am _k'lyath_. My presence was useful to Solek on occasions.'

Spock nodded slowly. The word was familiar to him, since his own mental abilities were approaching the level of this woman. _K'lyath_ designated those who had such abnormally strong mental powers that they found it difficult, without strict training, not to constantly sense the thoughts of those around them. Spock, when he was younger, had been tested for the condition, but although his telepathic ability was strong, it did not fall into the same category. T'Lan would be able to stand in the next room to him and sense his thoughts without him ever being aware of her presence. It was undoubtedly a useful ability, but most Vulcans who possessed it chose to cloister themselves in Gol rather than expose themselves to the risk and distrust of living amongst thousands of less disciplined and less able people.

'You have a meditation statue,' T'Lan said after a pause.

Spock moved his hands minutely on the blood-warm placard of stone under his hands. He had been given the statue very early on in his blindness, while still on Earth recovering in hospital. The stone was an inorganic metamorph, a crystal with the ability to change its shape according to the emotional manipulation of the person touching it. Until T'Lan had startled him the stone had been perfectly flat, like a slate under his palms. It had taken him over an hour to settle his thoughts, and the stone, into that inert position. Now he could feel slight ripples and peaks under the sensitive skin of his palms and fingers as he, and the stone, reacted to this unexpected presence.

'Yes,' he nodded. 'Solek intended that I try the _v'ahnak_ bell. I was interested in a comparison with the efficacy of the meditation statue. I admit I am not accustomed to use either.'

'Yet you brought the statue to Gol?

Spock's eyebrow quirked.

'A human trait, perhaps,' he said, at ease admitting that while the relaxation of meditation was still in him. 'There are a number of items that I carry with me when I travel away from the ship. This statue has been with me for only a little less time than my blindness.'

'A souvenir of a catastrophic alteration in your life,' T'Lan said, the puzzlement clear in her voice.

Spock shook his head. 'No,' he said mildly. 'A reminder that there are alternatives – and a reminder of those people around me who – care – about my predicament.'

He pressed his palm flat over the meditation stone, then felt for the small bag he had carried with him, and slipped the stone inside. The _v'ahnak_ bell had long since stopped vibrating, and he reached out for it, but his hand touched only air.

'I apologise – I picked up the bell to examine it,' T'Lan said, placing it in his hand.

Spock took it from her, a brief suspicion running through his mind that she had, in fact, picked up the bell to test his perception.

'You are correct,' she said. Was that a hint of satisfaction in her voice that she had read him correctly? 'I wondered how dulled your awareness had become due to your meditation. I came with another objective than simply checking your progress, Spock. I am given to understand – in fact, I can tell quite plainly – that you have an abnormally high esper rating.'

Spock nodded succinctly. 'That has been proven in tests.'

'I know that you use that ability to enhance your awareness of your surroundings,' she nodded in return. 'To me, it is quite obvious, although hidden to most Vulcans and psi-null beings. I can help you to hone your ability, should you wish me to do so. I am not experienced in the disadvantages of blindness, but with close melding we should be able to achieve a great deal. I can teach you how to make awareness a subconscious process.'

'I would be gratified,' Spock nodded.

'Then we can begin now. I have spoken to Solek and gained his permission to help you in this way. Are you amenable to starting now?'

'I have little else to do,' Spock said, raising an eyebrow. 'I have made no arrangements for further instruction with Solek today.'

She sat beside him, and began. 'Open your mind, Spock. Let yourself become aware of the air around you. Become aware of the subtlety of sound, the currents of the air, the currents of the minds in proximity to yours.'

Spock sat and allowed himself to open up into a deeper awareness of everything that surrounded him. He could feel T'Lan's mind close to his own, her thoughts running like ripples. She was shielding only very lightly. It was like sinking into water and feeling it envelop every part of his body. He could feel that this was going to be a strange and valuable experience, and one that could not compare to anything that he had been taught before.

The process took time, and time seemed to melt away until he was unaware of its passing. But as the woman continued to instruct him through the contact his awareness of the space around him seemed to unfold like a flower opening in the sun. At one point during the process the minds of all of the residents of Gol seemed to make themselves felt like pinprick stars in the darkness, until T'Lan helped him gently to fold his awareness in again and restrict it to his immediate surroundings.

When he rose up from the contact with T'Lan he felt light, almost as if he were floating. The walls felt like shadows around him, and the body of T'Lan was a nebulous presence almost like a half-glimpsed figure in the darkness. The air felt alive, the ground more real. It was as if the volume had been turned up on everything around him.

'I thank you, T'Lan,' he said, inclining his head towards her. 'This has been very beneficial.'

She nodded, and he was aware of her nod by more than the slight sound of the movement.

'Shall we walk back to your room, Spock?' she asked, and he assented, gathering up the bag containing his meditation stone and slipping the _v'ahnak _bell inside. He found he had no need to take her arm and extended his cane largely by habit. In the quiet calm of these underground rooms he could extend his awareness to its fullest extent, and felt preternaturally aware of the locations of walls and the undulations of the ground.

'Do not rely too heavily on your new-found awareness, Spock,' T'Lan warned him. 'It will be harder in more cluttered situations, and it is not infallible.'

'No, of course,' Spock said, letting the tip of his cane touch the ground. It would be foolish to trust his field of awareness too far.

'You are not staying here many more days, are you, Spock?' T'Lan asked him as they navigated out of the room and back up towards the outer chambers.

'Another three days,' Spock said reflectively. 'Solek believes that I am close to achieving that which I desire.'

'A deeper attainment of _kaiidth_,' T'Lan said. 'What is your understanding of that term, Spock?'

'Mastery of the unavoidable,' Spock replied instantly.

'I am of the opinion that that is conceit,' T'Lan told him. 'If a situation is unavoidable, it can hardly be mastered. You may exist alongside it. The implication of mastery is that one can effect change.'

'Then – acceptance of the unavoidable,' Spock offered.

'That is more precise,' she nodded. 'A great deal of your basic mental discipline stems from that philosophy. You may master your emotions, and master your physical reactions. But pain, for example, is something which must be accepted rather than suppressed. You may bring your thoughts away from the pain, but you cannot alter it merely by thought. You ignore it.'

'That is true,' Spock nodded.

He touched a hand meditatively to his leg. Only that morning he had walked without warning into the sharp corner of a low table. If he allowed his mind to dwell on it he could still feel the dull residue of the pain in his thigh where a bruise was probably developing. He had not caused the pain to cease to exist. He had merely accepted the sensation, dismissed it as unimportant, and moved his thoughts onto other things. An increase in occasional bruises and minor cuts was something that he had learnt to accept in his sightless state.

'Acceptance,' T'Lan said. 'You are very close to achieving that which you desire.'

Spock walked on beside her, aware of the sound her robes moving around her, the heat of her body, the sound of her loose hair moving a little as she moved. His awareness was so intense that it was almost overwhelming. Acceptance seemed to be around him and in him. T'Lan was right. There was no mastery of the unavoidable, only acceptance.


	6. Chapter 5

It was early when Spock found himself back outside his and Christine's rented accommodation. The air was clear and dry and just beginning to heat with the day, and he wondered whether Christine would be awake. He had not contacted her since his decision to return in Solek's skimmer was last minute, and he had not wanted to wake her.

He followed Solek up to the door, not finding it necessary to touch his arm.

'There, Spock,' Solek said, putting Spock's case down on the ground and turning to face him. 'I shall take my leave.'

Spock raised his hand in the ta'al. 'Live long and prosper, Solek,' he said. 'I thank you for your help.'

'Live long and prosper,' the man returned. 'My time with you was most fascinating. I wish you future peace.'

Spock nodded, and Solek turned away from him and walked back down the path to where he had parked his skimmer. The door banged and the skimmer moved swiftly away with a hum that built and then faded with distance. There was almost no sound left behind, only the softness of the wind, the running of water, and the calls of a few small animals in the distance.

Spock reached his hand up to the door and turned the handle. Instantly a frenzied barking set up inside. Had Spock been human he would have smiled. That was not a bark to warn of intruders. Sacha was in no doubt as to who was coming in. Then he heard Christine's voice struggling to break through the dog's barking, and as he opened the door there was a surprised laugh.

'Spock, I – didn't expect you,' Christine said breathlessly, trying to pull the dog back and get to the Vulcan herself. 'I thought you'd call for me to pick you up!'

'It was necessary for Solek to visit ShiNaran. The house was on his direct flight path,' Spock explained. 'Sasha, _sit_,' he said, and the dog instantly obeyed.

He stepped through the door with one fluid movement and shut it behind himself, reaching out a hand to Christine's head. Touching her hair, he drew her forward and pressed his lips to hers with a sudden, deeply-felt passion.

'I have missed you,' he murmured, keeping his forehead pressed against hers as his hands sought her shoulders and arms, and moved down to intertwine with her fingers. He felt her intense relief. He had not returned an automaton of logic. He was still _Spock,_ in all the ways that she loved him.

She clasped his hands in her own, feeling the heat of his soft, dry skin burning against hers. She ran a fingertip over his. His skin was dry with the dust and aridity of the atmosphere of Gol, but his fingertips were still polished from being constantly traced over Braille pages and tactile displays and everything else that Spock had to take in with his fingers instead of his eyes. She lifted one of his hands to her mouth and kissed those fingertips as if she could take away each callus with the touch. He shivered almost imperceptibly, and she smiled, suddenly remembering that as a Vulcan Spock's hands took in many more impulses than simple touch could give. She kissed them again, touching each fingertip in turn with her lips, enjoying the very vivid impression of melting that the Vulcan was showing.

'Christine…' he said hoarsely.

'Sorry. That can come later,' she said softly, giving a firmer pressure on his hands with hers as she ceased the tantalising stroking. 'I want you to come look at this.'

Spock followed her across the room, realising she was leading him to the computer, and he sat in the chair before the desk.

'There,' she said, reaching around him to touch buttons with sure fingers. 'Touch screen's on. Read that.'

Spock began to trace swift fingers over the raised characters, reading, _Adaptation of McCoy/Spock (2268) Treatment for C-Dionyxalide-Partho Blindness, for application to more vulnerable tissue types. Suggestions for refinement._

His hands paused briefly then skimmed further down the page, taking in the information swiftly.

'You must have read this,' he said. 'Do you believe it to be viable?'

'I – believe it might be viable,' she said cautiously. 'I have spoken to Dr Alunan, and he admits his research is in its infancy. He only published that article the day you left for Gol. But – he is willing to have us come to Earth and discuss it with him. He hopes you might be able to give him some useful insights.'

Spock's eyebrow rose. He was not vain, but his scientific contribution was very rarely characterised as _useful insights_.

'Have you made any plans?' he asked.

'Not yet – I wanted to see what you thought first. No point trekking halfway across the galaxy on a wild goose chase.'

His eyebrow rose again, both at her inaccurate estimate of the distance between Vulcan and Earth, and her supposition that they would be in pursuit of feral waterbirds.

'Do you have additional research of your own?' he asked.

She smiled at his faith that she would have spent the past week engaged in research.

'I do,' she nodded. 'At least, what I could do with the theory. It's – Hang on,' she murmured, leaning past him to touch the keys. 'Let me find it for you. It's – there, it's in my personal folder, under Alunan Research.'

Spock's fingers skimmed the information again.

'You believe there may be problems in my case?' he asked cautiously.

'Well, your tissue-type is very unique,' she began reluctantly.

Spock frowned, declining to correct her qualification of the word 'unique'.

'Technically unique,' he nodded, 'but there are plenty of parallels in nature.'

'Technically unique,' she echoed. 'It presents problems. Although there are parallels they're not the same. Perhaps we could culture tissue samples from your genetic code in the lab and run our tests on them. Dr Alunan's research revolves around some way of softening the cells in vulnerable tissue types and targeting the area with much more precision to be sure of there being less damage. But really I – well, I seriously doubt he's as good a scientist as you, Spock,' she said honestly. 'He's got something, I'm sure, but you could take it to the next level.'

'And the doctor is willing to expose his research to us?' Spock asked.

Christine squirmed. 'Willing is a bit of an overstatement,' she admitted. 'He's very protective. But as long as we don't try to 'steal his research' he's happy for us to go over there and see if we can help.'

Spock's eyebrow quirked. 'I can assure him that I have no interest in stealing his research,' he said. 'My only motivation is finding a remedy for my blindness. Our objectives are the same.'

He turned away from the computer, putting his hand down to Sasha's head. She was sitting patiently at his side, waiting for his attention with her head on his knee.

'I will book our passage to Earth later,' he said decisively. 'Do you have any preferences as to where to stay? The man is in London, is he not?'

'He is,' Christine nodded, 'but we don't need to let that restrict us. It's winter on Earth right now, isn't it?'

'In the northern hemisphere, yes,' Spock nodded.

'Well, I don't have a deep longing for London in the winter,' she admitted. 'But I did wonder – '

'Yes, Christine?' Spock prompted her, wondering at her hesitancy.

'Well, I wondered about going home,' she said quickly. 'It's been so long since I've been back there.'

Spock closed his eyes, reaching up to touch the hand that she had lain on his shoulder. Her skin was smooth and cool under his fingers.

'Your mother lives in the same town as my grandparents,' he said in a conversational tone. 'I would be amenable to staying there.'

'Really?' she asked. He could hear the joy in her voice.

'Really,' he said. He turned the computer off and stood up. 'Should I surmise that you have not yet had breakfast?' he asked.

'I've had a little toast,' she told him. 'I got up early.'

'Then shall we take Sacha for a walk while it is still cool outside?' he asked.

Christine laughed quietly at that. 'I think your idea and my idea of cool differs,' she told him. 'At any rate, it's not as hot as it will be later.'

'Then where is Sacha's harness?' Spock asked, turning toward the door.

'Just where you keep it, on the hook by the door,' she assured him. 'Oh, it'll be nice to take a walk with you,' she said. 'We've been lonely without you.'

Later Spock sat outside the house while Christine fixed drinks indoors. Sacha lay panting at his feet, and the heat wrapped around him. The place seemed to have come alive with the heat of the day, and there was a medley of noise. At this latitude there was more free running surface water and far more lush vegetation than Spock was used to on his home planet. It was a novel experience for him to sit on the stone paving surrounding the house listening to the light breeze ruffling thick-leaved plants, and the sounds of creatures and birds moving and calling in the undergrowth.

He got to his feet and walked carefully down from the patio onto the grass-like vegetation that grew around the house. He had familiarised himself with this garden before leaving for Gol, but it was always best to be cautious in case of change. The sound of the river to his right that bordered the garden both intrigued and disturbed him. The sound itself was pleasing enough, but he knew from Christine's descriptions that the bank was uneven and treacherous, and he had no desire to suddenly find himself in the water. Taking evening walks along the banks with his bond-mate was one thing, but he took great care not to venture too close alone.

He stepped a little closer and Sacha came near to him and whined. He put his hand down to her, reassuring her non-verbally that he was not about to go any closer. She was not wearing her harness but he put his hand to her collar and let her lead him back towards the house. He could still hear Christine inside, pouring water, so he moved to the _keev'la_ tree that stood near the paving by the house, and reached his hand up into the lush branches, feeling for fruit. He found two ripe _keev'las_, fruit that were much like papaya in shape, but coloured a deep blue-purple. He twisted sharply to separate them from the branch and walked back to the patio, running his thumb over the smooth-skinned fruit and reassuring himself of their ripeness. As he stepped up onto the patio Christine came out through the door.

'Here,' he said, holding one out to Christine as she walked out of the house. 'To go with the tea.'

'Oh, let me put this tray down,' she said, and he heard the clink of pottery and metal as she laid the tray down and then took the fruit from his hand. 'I had to hold myself back from picking the tree bare while you were gone,' she admitted, and he could hear that she was smiling. 'They're so good. Have you ever had mangos?'

'I have. They are somewhat like mangos,' he nodded, biting into his own fruit and letting the taste burst into his mouth. He sat in the easy chair by the table and felt for his tea.

'Here,' Christine told him, putting the mug to his hand. 'Now, while I was fixing the tea I took the chance to open up a communication to a realtor back home,' she told him. 'There are a few apartments in town we could take, and one of them sounds excellent. If you're happy to trust my judgement I'll go ahead and book it, and then you can sort out the flight. Deal?'

Spock inclined his head. 'It is a deal,' he said. 'We may need to purchase cold weather clothing, of course, but that can be done on Earth. We could be on a flight within three days if you're happy with that.'


	7. Chapter 6

[A.N. I might just upload everything I've got so far, as long as people are all right with waiting on new chapters. I'm trying hard not to take too long on writing.]

New England in winter was a stark contrast to Vulcan, even to the higher latitude where Spock and Christine had been based. Every breath that Spock inhaled seemed to coat his lungs with cold and the air held that odd, clean snow scent that he remembered from visits to this place in his youth. It had been many years since he had been back here. Always when he had visited Earth in recent years he had chosen the familiarity of San Francisco, both for convenience and comfort. He had been so frequently required to be on hand at Starfleet headquarters that the handful of relatives who expressed interest in seeing him had come to him, rather than the other way round. There was little problem with transporters and supersonic travel in them making the journey, and it had always seemed that they decided to visit before any thought of it entered Spock's mind. He sought out few of his relatives merely for the pleasure of their company, since his companions on the _Enterprise_ shared so many more of his interests.

One of his first ports of call was a large mall on the edge of town, where he stood patiently as Christine picked through winter clothing, asking his opinion and handing him items to try on. This all seemed exceptionally tedious, since he had little interest in how the clothing looked but only in whether or not it would provide adequate protection against the weather.

'Christine,' he said finally, carefully keeping exasperation from his voice, 'assuming that the clothing in this store is sized consistently, I see no logic in being present while you select garments. You are fully versed in my measurements.'

There was a silence. The store was a crowded, busy place, and Spock stood taking in his surroundings as he waited for her to speak. The temperature in here was very warm compared to the air temperature outside, and Spock found it quite a relief after the chill of the open air that left his extremities numb. The air here smelt of fabric conditioner and other artificial chemicals. This was an adult male department but there were still a number of children and infants around, and a perpetual murmur of female voices. It seemed striking that there were so many women shopping in an area of the store dedicated to masculine clothing. It did not seem to him that Christine would be out of company were he to leave her to it.

'It's good to have your opinions,' she said eventually. 'I mean, these clothes are for you.'

'I have complete confidence in your ability to make these decisions,' Spock assured her.

'Well – all right,' she said reluctantly. 'Do you want to wait in the café?'

'I ate before we left,' Spock replied.

He heard her give a sigh that she was obviously trying hard to suppress.

'Can you sit in the café and have a coffee while I pick out the rest of these clothes?' she asked with a great deal of patience.

Spock decided that acquiescence might be the most sensible course. 'I could sit in the café and have a cup of coffee,' he nodded.

'Do you need me to take you there?'

Spock turned his head, listening. He could hear the clattering and smell the scent of food and beverages from the café not far away. It was on the same floor as this one.

'No, I will be able to get there,' he said, taking hold of Sacha's harness. As he walked away he thought he heard another woman say very softly, 'Men,' and Christine replying, 'Vulcans...'

He shut his mind to the conversation that was starting to spring up and concentrated instead on navigating the store floor towards the café. Humans organised stores in the most illogical ways, with clusters of goods everywhere, it seemed. It was like navigating an ocean archipelago. But with Sacha's assistance he found his way to the café and gained the attention of a member of staff, who was happy to show him to a seat and bring him his order.

He wondered whether it would be acceptable to mutter, 'Women,' or perhaps, 'Humans.' He could not see any sense in standing next to Christine while she chose clothes, since his only requirement was that they were warm and comfortable, whereas she had an agenda of style and colour that was meaningless to him. The same was true of any clothes that she picked out for herself.

He took his datapadd out of his small shoulder bag and put it on the table next to his coffee. He had not found the opportunity to speak to Dr Alunan about his research, and this crowded and noisy café was not the place to try, but he could at least access some of the notes that the scientist had released and read through them. It struck him that it would have been far more convenient for him to remain in their small rented apartment while Christine had come to do this shopping, but she had insisted on his coming to help pick out the goods.

It was precisely thirty-seven minutes before he sensed Christine approaching. Sasha sat up expectantly as she came to his table and sat down opposite him.

'Well, that's everything,' she said brightly. 'Mostly charcoal greys and blacks, but I bought a few sweaters that are a bit brighter. I'm having it all sent to the apartment. It's too much to carry. I guess you want to get straight back?'

Spock pressed the off button on his datapadd and slipped it back into the bag. 'I have a great deal of work to do,' he said.

Again he caught a sense of disappointment, and he asked, 'Did you wish to buy a drink?'

'No,' she said after a momentary pause. 'No, Spock. You're right. We need to get back.'

Outside Spock allowed her to put her arm through his as they walked along the snowy path. 'I disappoint you with my lack of human etiquette,' he commented. 'I have noticed the same problem in the times that I've attempted to socialise with Captain Kirk and the doctor.'

There was that silence again, long and slow, then Christine said, 'No, Spock. No, not really. I suppose the difference is more striking here on Earth. On Vulcan everyone's like you. Here, everyone is – '

'Here everyone is like you,' Spock nodded.

'I understand. I do understand,' Christine told him. 'I don't expect you to be like men I've dated in the past. But I suppose that there is a set of latent expectations that I need to learn to change.'

Spock nodded. 'Perhaps we both must change our expectations,' he said with the hint of a smile. 'Are there any cafés on our route back to the apartment? I would be very content to buy you coffee.'

He felt the lightening of her mood in the emanations of her mind and the way her arm tightened a little in his.

'Thank you, Spock,' she said. 'I appreciate that. I really do. But let's just get back to the apartment for now. You know, the offer means as much as the deed itself.'

Spock blinked. 'I do not believe that I understand human women,' he commented.

'You're not supposed to. The sidewalk's getting a little icy up ahead,' she told him, before adding, 'Let's go out for something later, once I've got this clothing sorted through and found you something a bit more weather-proof than that coat. You must be cold.'

Spock tilted his head in acknowledgement. 'I _am_ cold,' he told her.

'Well then, let's go home so I can warm you up,' she said with a smile.

Something very biologically male stirred in Spock at the tone of her words and he quickened his pace a little.

'Spock!' a male voice said loudly. 'Spock! My God! Long time, no – '

The man trailed off self-consciously.

'Long time, no see,' Spock completed for him, halting on the sidewalk and turning towards the voice. He recognised the man, he was sure, but he was not entirely certain of who it was. 'A colloquial idiom. I take no offence at references to sight. But I'm afraid you will have to identify yourself. You are either William or Christopher Grayson.'

'Billy, Spock,' the man said, reaching out to shake his hand. 'It's Billy Grayson. You know, I heard about what happened. I'm real sorry about all that,' he said, his voice trailing away a little.

Spock wanted to tell his cousin that there was no logic in apologising for something over which he had had no control, but in the back of his mind he could hear his mother's voice saying, _Let it pass, Spock. Just acknowledge the sentiment and move on._

'Thank you, Billy,' he nodded. 'May I introduce – '

'Chrissy!' his cousin said in sudden realisation, turning to the woman beside Spock. 'Chrissy Chapel! It's a small world, isn't it? My God…'

'You know Miss Chapel?' Spock asked curiously. The odds were not, of course, astronomical, since Christine and his cousin had both resided in this town in the past and were of a similar age, but still there was a large enough population that it was entirely possible that they might have never met.

'Oh, Chrissy and I had quite a thing going back in high school, didn't we, Chris?' Billy said with a laugh.

Spock turned his head placidly towards the nurse, but he was aware of a slightly heightened level of tension in her mind and a definite sharpening of his own reactions.

'I think _you_ had a thing going, Billy,' Christine said crisply, lifting her other hand to place it over Spock's fingers where they had tightened on her arm. 'But it was all one sided, believe me.'

There was a moment of silence, as if William Grayson were slowly taking in the closeness between the couple and the way that Christine's fingers moved protectively over Spock's.

'Spock?' he asked curiously. 'I don't intend any offence, but are you – '

'A couple,' Christine cut in. 'Yes, Billy, we're a couple.'

'Billy is my cousin,' Spock told her quietly. 'My mother's brother's son.'

'Well, you're right, Billy,' Christine smiled. 'It is a small world.'

'Statistically speaking – ' Spock began.

'My God, does he still do that?' Billy cut across him. 'Spock, you were quoting statistics at me when I was in fifth grade. Has nothing changed?'

Spock's eyebrow rose. 'I have become more accurate,' he said smoothly.

'Ah,' Billy said slowly. 'You've become more accurate, you've become a commander on Starfleet's most prestigious ship, you've become famous across half the galaxy, and with a beautiful woman on your arm to boot – and I've just put on middle-aged spread and moved two blocks closer to the grandparents so I can watch over them. Life isn't fair.'

'You have your sight,' Spock said in a completely level voice.

'Well – ' Billy said, suddenly awkward.

Spock shook his head. 'I apologise, Billy. Certain things do not change with me, either. I still have a degree of human in me.'

'It must've been tough, Spock. I'm sorry,' Billy said, giving his arm the kind of friendly slap that stood in lieu of a hug. 'Look, why don't you come back to my place? Get out of the snow. You never did well in the cold, did you?'

'It is not my natural element,' Spock nodded.

'But my, the dog seems to like it,' Billy grinned, as Sacha buried her nose in yet another drift of snow, searching for the source of some undefined smell. 'Is that a German Shepherd, Spock? Do you have him on your ship?'

'_She_ is a German Shepherd,' Spock corrected him. 'This is my guide dog, Sacha. She does live with me on the ship. Is your house nearby, Billy?'

'Oh, just down the end of the street,' Billy nodded.

'That's about seven, eight houses down,' Christine added in an undertone, aware of Spock's reticence to walk too far in this slippery ice and snow. He was holding on very firmly to her arm, and had already almost slipped over once on the way out to the store. She knew by now that Spock held a most illogical fear of injuring himself through an inability due to his blindness.

'So why don't you come on in for coffee and a chat about old times?' Billy asked him.

Spock said smoothly, 'We have a rather pressing engagement at present, Billy. We are expecting some goods to be delivered. May we – take a rain check?'

'Well, a snow check maybe,' Billy said. He patted Spock's arm again in a brusque, masculine way. 'Sure, Spock. You're in town for a while, then?'

'For at least a month,' Spock nodded, stepping backwards unobtrusively so as to be out of range of his cousin's hand. 'We are at apartment twenty-one, one two one Argyll Street.'

'Well then, I'll call you later and we can arrange something,' Billy said in a jovial tone. 'I should let you both get on. I could always tell when you were getting cold. Your ears start to lose colour.'

Spock suppressed a sigh. 'Christine?' he said.

'Bye, Billy,' she said. 'Be sure to call, won't you?'

'Oh, I will,' he replied.

Spock took up Sacha's harness again and walked on with his arm through Christine's.

'And I thought Vulcans couldn't lie,' she said in an undertone once they were a suitable distance away.

Spock quirked an eyebrow. 'That is apocryphal,' he said. 'Besides, I did not lie entirely. You do wish to get back in order to receive a delivery.'

He could feel the slight confusion in her mind. Was he referring to the clothing that they had just bought, or was he using a most human form of _double entendre_? He left her wondering, and walked on without saying anything more.


	8. Chapter 7

London was nowhere near as cold as New England. That was some relief to Spock, although it made the extra layers he had put on for the walk to transporter station rather redundant once they were in the depths of the Underground amid crowds of other commuters. The shuttles down here were swift in the extreme, but it seemed that no amount of progress could get crowds of people in a small space to move efficiently once they were out of the cars.

'Phew,' Christine said, and he knew that she was hot too. 'Sooner we're out in the open the better. Perhaps I should have had us transport in somewhere closer than Euston. I'm not familiar enough with the area.'

'Euston was the closest transporter station to Dr Alunan's laboratory,' Spock assured her. 'Charing Cross doesn't accept international transportation. There was little option. But I would suggest a taxi on the return.'

'That would be a very good idea,' Christine said. She stepped with him off the top of the last escalator and they moved out through glass doors into the damp air. 'Oh!' she said.

Spock could feel wonder emanating from her mind as they stepped outside. The cane picked out something like small flagstones underfoot and he could hear a bustle of people and traffic, but little else beyond what sounded like the spraying of water and the flapping and cooing of a great deal of birds.

'Euston was so modernised I just didn't expect – ' Christine said breathlessly. 'It's all still – I don't know – eighteenth or nineteenth century?'

'Much of London does retain its ancient architecture,' Spock nodded.

'I didn't know the station brought us right out here. We're right across from Trafalgar Square. With the huge column, and – oh, the statues of lions, and do you hear the fountains?'

'Yes, I hear the fountains,' he nodded. Liberally running water had never greatly appealed to him.

'Did you know the National Art Gallery's just over there?' Christine continued, her desire causing her to take a few steps towards it.

'We are here to meet Dr Alunan,' Spock reminded her. 'We are scheduled to see him in a little under ten minutes.'

'Yes, I know,' Christine said in a tone of disappointment. 'But – let me see – yes, we need to walk directly through the square to get to where we're going.'

Her tone of triumph almost made Spock smile.

'I wonder why they don't call the station Trafalgar,' she mused as they walked forward into the square. What sounded like hundreds of pigeons took to the air and landed again. Sacha's harness quivered. Spock could feel her repressed desire to chase the birds. 'I don't even see a cross,' Christine continued. 'There's a statue of some guy on a horse, but – '

'It is called Charing Cross because of the Eleanor Cross, one of a series of such crosses erected by King Edward the first, in honour of his wife. The cross formerly stood on the site of the statue you mention,' Spock informed her. 'The cross was destroyed during the English Civil War, the statue erected during the Restoration. It is of Charles the second, who returned to claim the English throne.'

He could feel Christine looking at him.

'Did you read the entire history of London before we came here?' she asked dryly.

Spock lifted an eyebrow. 'I familiarised myself with our projected route and the landmarks along the way,' he corrected her. 'A logical preparation.'

'Of course,' Christine said. 'Well, you can be my tour guide.'

'We must get to the lab,' Spock reminded her again. 'If the pigeons will allow us passage.'

'Oh, there really aren't so many,' she assured him. 'It just sounds that way, I'm sure. Just like the people. It's not as crowded as down in the Underground.'

'That much is obvious,' Spock nodded.

''''''

Dr Alunan's lab was in a far more modern building, in an area that looked as if it had been totally restructured during the twenty second century. The page was fronted with great glass windows and a large amount of sleek metal and equipped with what seemed to be all the latest conveniences. This much Christine told Spock on their entry to the building. He could sense the change in architecture. Along the streets the scents and sounds were typical of a landscape constructed of damp stone. In this place the echoes were higher pitched and there was a glittering quality to what light Spock could see.

Alunan admitted them to his lab with an attitude that struck Spock as grudging.

'I was working. I was working,' he grumbled, shuffling across the floor and starting to push things aside on a flat surface.

Spock raised an eyebrow. He could feel Christine's ire raising. 'We had made the appointment in advance,' he reminded the man.

'Yes, yes,' Alunan muttered. Then suddenly he said, 'Not that creature! No, I made no agreement about bringing animals into my laboratory!'

Spock halted in mid step. 'This is my guide dog,' he said. 'She helps me to navigate. There are laws in place ensuring that animal aides are admitted to all venues.'

'No, no, no, not in my lab!' the scientist insisted. 'Not a dog in my lab. The contamination! The dirt!'

'The dog is no more dirty than I am,' Spock replied. Christine shifted uncomfortably beside him.

'Will she wait outside the door?' she asked Spock in a low voice. 'It might be easier.'

'She will,' Spock said reluctantly. 'Next time I shall not bring her.'

He stepped briefly outside the door and told Sacha, 'Lie down. Stay.' Then he took Christine's arm to walk back into the lab.

'Well, then, I suppose you'll sit down,' Alunan said, and Christine took Spock to one of the offered chairs.

Spock decided not to make an issue of the man's combative stance. Christine had already warned him of the man's prickly and suspicious nature, although he had not quite expected this audience to be so begrudged. He sat and took out his padd ready to share any data that might be needed.

'You're not taking anything away on that. Oh no,' Alunan said immediately. Spock could feel Christine bristling.

'Dr Alunan, we're here to help you,' she said crisply. 'I've already assured you that we have no interest in stealing any of your data or taking any credit. All we want is to help find a cure for Commander Spock's blindness. We're working towards the same aim.'

'Well,' Alunan said. 'Well...' There was a silence, then he began in a rush, 'I have been running tests on fifteen subjects all with sensitive tissue types. Cloning their cells and using the cell sheets for my experiments. I believe I'm working towards a much safer way to treat this blindness than your frankly reckless method.'

'I was somewhat surprised that you did not contact me at an early stage of your experimentation,' Spock said. 'The nucleus of the research was pioneered by myself, Miss Chapel, and Dr McCoy, and I am what you would call a perfect model for your experiment.'

'Too far away, too busy,' Alunan said.

Spock was sure that the man was shaking his head. He was a strange sounding man. Spock was aware that he was an Exoxinian, grey skinned and small in stature, and quite different to either humans or Vulcans in appearance and manner, but he had never come across a member of his race in person before. He did not know if this irascibility was peculiar to the species, or just to Alunan's personality.

'You mean that _I _was too far away and busy, or that you were?' he asked curiously.

'Both, both,' Alunan muttered.

Spock felt Christine shift beside him and gained a sense of her feelings, which were somewhat akin to his own. He was wondering if Alunan had restrained himself from contacting Spock merely because of his great suspicion and jealousy at the thought of a scientist of Spock's reputation entering his lab.

'Well, I am here now, Dr Alunan,' he said in a level voice. 'Would you like to explain your research?'

'You've read the abstract?' Alunan asked.

'The abstract and the paper,' Spock nodded.

'Well then you know. It's a virus. You know that, don't you? What do I need to explain to you?'

Spock held in a sigh. 'I understand that you have developed a virus that weakens the opaque cells in particular, and is relatively harmless to normal body cells. Your research has its roots in the treatment of virulent cancers. What I fail to understand it how one virus can work equally in many different exo-biologies.'

'There's the problem. There's the problem,' Alunan muttered. 'Virulence, mutation, different tissue types. Yes, that's where the problem lies. Every patient is different. People from all corners of the galaxy. How to make a virus work for everyone, how to protect each patient from adverse effects.'

He stood suddenly.

'You will allow me to give you a full physical,' he said. 'I must take blood samples, tissue samples, culture cells from your eyes in particular.'

'In good time,' Spock said flatly. 'Your treatment is an adaptation of the treatment developed by myself and Dr McCoy. Your paper did not go into great detail on that aspect of the process.'

'Oh, that's the most simple part,' Alunan dismissed him. 'The virus weakens the cells sufficiently that a lower dose of disruptor energy is far more effective than your current high power dose. That's all. It's no more than the bite of a flea compared to the level of disruptor energy that you were using. I am working on developing a mutation of the virus that attacks the cells completely, with no need for disruptor energy.'

'It will be fascinating to see how the treatment works,' Christine said eagerly.

'You will let me scan you,' Alunan said, and Spock heard the whirr of a medical scanner. 'I can do nothing without a full make up of your DNA, blood type, your genetic peculiarities, the extent of your blindness.'

'Very well,' Spock nodded. He could see no sense in prevaricating any longer, since it was obvious that Alunan was focussed wholly on getting his scan details. 'Scan me. Then we can talk further.'

'Here then. Over here,' Alunan said, and Christine murmured, 'There's a biobed in the next room.'

Spock stood and unfolded his cane and followed the other two into what felt like a smaller, more constricting room with a lower ceiling. He mounted the bed and lay still while Alunan performed his scans.

'And the tissue samples,' Alunan said. 'Yes? I shall take those now.'

'You may take those now,' Spock nodded.

'Then lie precisely still. There will be no pain. I'll put the grip up against your head to stop any movement.'

'It's just two bars to hold your head still, on either side of your head,' Christine told him as Alunan adjusted something that lay cold and pressuring either side of Spock's skull.

The sound of Alunan's instruments came closer to his face and Christine told him, 'He's just coming down to your eyes. Hold still.'

Spock lay motionless, unblinking as a light descended and there was the slightest pressuring sensation at the front of his eye. Alunan muttered under his breath, and then the man moved away and the restraints were released.

'Is your examination complete?' Spock asked, and Alunan said, 'Oh yes. Get up now. I have everything.'

The atmosphere seemed to mellow now that Alunan had the readings that he desired, and when they moved back into the other room he seemed far more willing to share his research. Spock found himself in such deep discussion that time and surroundings seemed to fade away. It was good after so long away from the ship and his work to be able to focus purely on the logic of a scientific problem, even if he was so personally involved in the problem.

He left the lab with Christine feeling far more positive about Alunan's advances in the area.

'Oh, it's dark already,' Christine said in amazement as they left the building. 'I hadn't realised we'd been in there so long.'

'Well, it is six p.m. local time, and we are fifty one degrees north,' Spock reminded her.

She shook her head as if trying to rid it of an annoying sound. 'Five hours time difference,' she said. 'That always messes with my mind. We left at eight and lost five hours in transit.'

'And will gain five hours when we return,' Spock reminded her. 'It is only a little past lunch time on the East coast.'

'Well, maybe we should go grab some lunch,' she suggested. 'Do you mind spending a little more time here? London is pretty amazing in the dark.'

'Is it?' Spock asked her curiously, an eyebrow raised.

'Oh, well I don't mean the dark is amazing,' she qualified, 'but the lights in all the buildings and along the streets. The rainwater glitters. I'd love to go for a stroll by the Thames. See the Houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey. Oh, I've wanted to see these places forever.'

'We will have plenty of time,' Spock reminded her. 'Perhaps you could come over without me and see London at your leisure, in the light. After all, I have visited before and sight-seeing is largely lost on me.'

She smiled. 'I guess it is. Well, let's just have lunch, then, and then get back home. I promised Billy I'd call him to talk about meeting up,' she added with a sense of reluctance in her voice.

'You do not like my cousin?' Spock asked.

She squirmed. 'It's not that I don't like him exactly,' she began.

Spock focussed his thoughts on her sense of discomfort. 'Perhaps you can articulate your feelings about him?'

'I don't know,' she shrugged. 'He was just always on me in high school, always a bit too much, you know. Asking me to go out with him. I just didn't like him that much. We didn't have anything in common. And he was too full on.'

'We don't have to socialise with him if you do not want to,' Spock assured her.

She laughed. 'He's your cousin, Spock. Of course we do.'

'Sometimes I despair of ever understanding human social politics,' Spock replied.


	9. Chapter 8

As it turned out, another branch of human social politics was waiting to come into play when they returned to New England.

'Oh, it's a message from mother!' Christine said as she checked the comm on their return to the house. 'She's probably asking why I haven't called her yet. I'll have to explain everything that we've been doing.'

'My experience of human mothers is largely limited to my own, although I have met the captain's mother,' Spock reflected. 'Did your mother expect you to contact her immediately upon your arrival?'

Christine laughed. 'Most mothers do, and I think yours would be included in that. I meant to. I really did. But I was so busy sorting out the clothing and shopping for food and all those other things that I just didn't get to it. She's probably offended now.'

'You did come here because you wished to see your parents?' Spock asked her curiously.

'Yes, I did,' she nodded. 'But mother and I have – well – I suppose it's a difficult relationship. Of course we love one another and I want to see her. It's just – I don't know. I never felt like I became what she wanted me to be. She wanted another doctor in the family, and I was just a nurse.'

'You chose a nursing post in order to facilitate a search for your fiancé,' Spock reminded her. 'You have always had the intention of completing your MD, have you not?'

'Well, yes, I have, but I've let things drift by,' she murmured. 'I've been concentrating on that bio-research PhD and – well, you know how it is.'

Spock remained silent. He was not entirely sure _how it was_ since usually when he had a goal he made sure to complete it.

'Your mother is aware that your career is not your own?' he asked.

Christine laughed and tossed a crust of the bread she was eating to Sacha. The dog snapped it up and then slumped onto the floor with a satisfied groan.

'I'm not entirely sure she is,' Christine said. 'Well, maybe I'll just write her a quick message. I'm tired and it's late. I can speak to her tomorrow.'

Spock leant back on the settee and listened to the slight noises as Christine accessed the comm terminal and began typing her message. He had his datapadd on his lap and was carefully reviewing all of the research that Alunan had finally allowed him to take away after their meeting. It was obvious that the man was withholding some elements of his discoveries, but there was a great deal of data to sift through and he could extrapolate some of the mission portions. It was a fairly simple idea, it seemed. The breakthrough had been in finding a virus which would target the mutated cells without targeting other body cells. Dr Alunan was not forthcoming on how he had managed this. Spock wondered if he had engineered the virus himself or whether the root had come from an organic disease. It if had it could be from anywhere in the known galaxy.

It would be a fascinating project to attempt to track down the root of the virus, and something that he was sure Christine would be very interested in. He had to admit that it was highly pleasant seeing her so enthralled and engrossed in such work. He was certain that most human men would cite the shape of eyes, the colour of hair, the curves of the body among a woman's most attractive features. To him the sharpness of the mind and the ability to lose oneself in pure data were at least as attractive, although he had no desire to spurn the physical attributes that Christine brought to their relationship.

He wondered what Christine would say if he complimented her on her excellently scientific mind. He opened his mouth to say something of the sort when she abruptly exclaimed, 'Oh, really!'

'You have a response from your mother?' he asked as she turned from the comm.

'And I thought you were a stranger to human intuition?' Christine asked him.

'It is not intuition, Christine, but a reasonable extrapolation from the circumstances and your tone of voice,' Spock corrected her. 'It _is_ a response from your mother?'

'Yes, it is,' she sighed, coming across the room and sitting down beside him. 'We're going to see her tomorrow. Dad will be working, but she wants us to come over anyway so she can see us as soon as possible.'

Spock paused a moment, attempting to assess the feelings that he could sense from her mind.

'You are not happy about this?' he asked.

'It's more that she's left me no choice,' Christine sighed. 'Just once, you know, just once I'd like to take control in that relationship. Just once.'

'You could tell her no,' Spock suggested.

'I couldn't,' Christine said.

'You have often been most assertive in the past,' Spock reminded her. 'I have been on the receiving end of some of your assertiveness in sick bay, if you recall.'

'Well, if you remember how _you_ listen to my assertiveness in sick bay then you'll know how mother would respond to my assertiveness now,' she said tartly. 'Not going is not an option. Besides, it's stupid. I want to see her. She wants to see me. There's no logical reason not to go tomorrow.'

'Then we shall go, and it will be your decision to go,' Spock assured her.

Christine sighed. 'All right. Well, she's expecting us around one tomorrow. She's going to give us lunch. Just be prepared to be on show.'

'On show?' Spock echoed.

'As the new guy, the new boyfriend. Mother does like to vet my romantic interests. You'll be a doozy for her.'

'A – doozy?' Spock asked, beginning to feel as if he were embarking on learning a different language.

'You know. Something special. Something out of the ordinary. I mean _really _out of the ordinary.'

'You refer to my genetic heritage?'

'I suppose I do,' she smiled, leaning in against his shoulder and sighing. 'I think your genetic heritage is exquisite. But mother – well, she has nothing against non-humans, but she does like to find fault with things.'

'Do you place stock in her opinion?'

'She's my mother, Spock. I don't have to agree with her but I suppose I'll always have a latent desire to please her.'

Spock went to bed later with Christine's words running through his mind. He did not harbour insecurities about their relationship. After all, Christine had held a romantic interest in him for a long time, and Vulcans did not change their minds easily either. But the meeting with her mother tomorrow would be an interesting occasion. He wondered if she looked at all like her daughter, then remembered that Christine's hair was naturally brown, so perhaps her mother would be of a similar complexion. It also sounded, although he was sure that Christine would strenuously deny it, that they were also of a similar personality; strong and with dearly held opinions.

''''''

The weather was quite bitter the next day and Spock felt chilled even in the small apartment, which was well insulated but made to be heated to human standards, not Vulcan. He was grateful for the thick sweaters that Christine had bought for him a few days ago and was already wearing three layers of clothing even before they had left the apartment.

'Is it snowing?' he asked of Christine as he stood near the window. There was no way to tell without opening it and putting his hand out into the air, and that was not something he was eager to do.

There was a moment's pause and then she came across the room to stand beside him.

'Snowing like there's no tomorrow,' she said, with a brightness in her voice that seemed to make the snow a welcome thing, even if to Spock it mostly meant added difficulty and more cold. 'Settling beautifully, too.'

'Hmm,' Spock said.

'Well, Sacha enjoys it anyway,' Christine said brightly, and the dog leapt up at her name. 'No, not now, later,' Christine told the dog firmly. 'We'll go out later.'

'It is almost half past twelve,' Spock reminded her.

'Yes,' Christine said, with a guilty tone to her voice.

'Christine?' he asked her.

'It's just – mother thinks she's allergic to dogs,' she said.

Spock raised an eyebrow.

'She _thinks_ that she is allergic to dogs?' he repeated.

'Well, the medical scanners don't agree with her and you'd think she could just take a shot, but – well – she still says she's allergic to them,' Christine said awkwardly. 'So do you think it would be all right if – well – '

'Sacha can remain here,' Spock nodded. It was odd to see Christine, who was usually so confident, so put off her stride. He felt a certain amount of sympathy for her, remembering numerous occasions when he had been obliged to alter his plans because of Sarek's peculiarities.

'Shall we get out into the snow, then?' Christine asked once Spock had taken Sacha to the kitchen and shut her in. She added more softly, 'I appreciate it, about Sacha.'

As they stepped out into the freezing air a whirl of snowflakes flurried into Spock's face, and he blinked, holding onto Christine's arm firmly as they walked down the path.

'There is a certain benefit in holding on to a person's arm in such icy conditions,' Spock admitted. 'The dog cannot help me if I slip.'

'Well, there is that,' she said. 'Are you sure you don't want to just call a cab?' she checked as another fluster of snow was driven against their faces.

'I am sure,' Spock assured her. 'There is no reason not to walk.'

Actually he could add up a few reasons in his mind, the temperature and the icy state of the sidewalks quite prominent among them, but having spent the greater proportion of the past decade or more largely confined to the sterile atmosphere of a starship it felt good to take advantage of every opportunity to make contact with the outdoors. Besides, he was aware that the time taken to walk to Christine's parents' house would afford her a chance to relax somewhat and be in a more receptive frame of mind when she met her mother.

When they arrived outside the house he could still feel the tension from Christine, but she did seem somewhat more relaxed. They stepped up onto the porch and the falling snow suddenly ceased. Christine rang the bell, and a moment later the door opened.

There were the subtle noises and the effusion of emotions that usually surrounded some type of embracing, and he heard Christine say in a rather muffed voice, 'Mom, it's so good to see you.'

The indeterminate noises continued for a few moments longer, and then Christine stepped back and touched her hand to Spock's arm, saying, 'Mom, this is Spock.'

The pause was so small as to be almost unnoticeable, but it was definitely there. And then a voice very like Christine's, but rather older in tone, said, 'Spock, it's lovely to finally meet you.'

Spock inclined his head politely. The woman's hesitation was not entirely surprising. Many people found meeting a Vulcan a daunting prospect, and the effect could only be enhanced when that Vulcan was involved in a relationship with one's daughter.

'Likewise, Dr Chapel,' he said. 'I have heard a great deal about you from Christine.'

There was that hesitation again, and then Dr Chapel said in a rather rushed voice, 'Well, come on in out of the cold. I've got coffee brewing, and I just got in a batch of cookies from the baker. I – suppose you do eat cookies, Spock? Christine always loved her cookies.'

Spock assented, choosing to follow the dictates of human social intercourse rather than logic, despite the fact that he was not hungry. Christine murmured very low in his ear, 'Mother never cooked, but she buys well.'

Spock turned his head toward her in interest. There had been a hint of amusement in her tone, but he wondered whether he could detect under that a trace of regret – a feeling, perhaps, of wishing for a mother who had baked sometimes rather than cultivated her career.

'The door opens on your right,' Christine said, still in that almost inaudible voice.

Spock could feel Dr Chapel's eyes on him as he moved towards the door. Scrutiny was something else that he was used to – especially when the one scrutinising him did not realise that he could sense the attention.

'Come on in and sit down,' Dr Chapel said, shutting the door behind them with a sharp noise. Christine took Spock into a well warmed room and they took a seat together on a firm settee.

'Chrissie, why don't you come and help me fix the coffee?' her mother asked.

Christine seemed to demur for a moment, and then stood up, pressing her hand over Spock's as she did.

'I'll be right back,' she said.

Spock nodded, and listened as they left the room. Once the door had closed he stood up, extending his cane and feeling lightly about his immediate area with it. The floor seemed to be wood with a rug just as the edge of the cane's reach. He could tell by the blurred light in his field of vision that there were probably windows with the blinds or curtains open, and a central ceiling light. The room smelt of cleaning products and a light scent that he was certain was sandalwood, or some inorganic facsimile of sandalwood. He was not about to go wandering around the room. There was little reason to. He sat back down on the settee and rested his head back, and realised that while he was still and silent he could hear Christine and her mother talking in the kitchen.

'You're got your man now, Christine,' her mother said. 'Why don't you let your hair grow natural? Brown suits you so.'

'I'm quite happy with it as it is,' Christine protested. 'Besides, Spock likes it blonde.'

'Christine, the man's stone blind!' her mother exclaimed. 'You could have it sky-blue-pink with yellow polka dots for all he'd know.'

'_Mother!_' Christine hissed. Her chair scraped on the floor with her words, and Spock heard her moving towards the kitchen door, and then changing her mind and reseating herself.

'You do too much for men,' her mother continued. 'You've always given yourself up too far for men. That's what started this ridiculous blonde thing, wasn't it? Why you gave up the chance to be a doctor, why you joined that warship.'

'The _Enterprise_ is _not_ a warship,' Christine protested, 'and I've never done anything I didn't want to do. I'm perfectly happy on the ship. No. I'm _more_ than happy.'

'Christine, you're involved with an emotionally unavailable alien!' her mother said in a low hiss which she must have imagined would be far beyond the reach of Spock's ear. Spock raised an eyebrow, fascinated but not upset.

'Oh, he's far from emotionally unavailable, believe me,' Christine said vehemently, making no such effort to lower her voice. 'Vulcans control their emotions, but they still have them – they just deal with them – much better than we do.'

'And he's blind, too,' her mother said, ignoring her barbed comment. 'Christine, he's just like the projects you used to bring back from the woods – the injured squirrels, the chicks fallen from their nests. They all died, you know.'

'Is this in _any_ way relevant?' Christine asked impatiently.

'Christine, he's a _project_ – '

'I'll let you finish making the coffee, mother,' Christine said abruptly.

Christine entered the room and sat heavily and abruptly on the settee beside Spock. He turned his head toward her, trying to gauge her emotions. She seemed worked up, but not as upset as he had imagined she was from her tone of voice.

'Humans have thin walls,' he commented dryly.

'Spock, that's my mother worrying about me,' she reassured him gently. 'It's her way of caring, nothing more. It doesn't mean she disapproves of you any more than she disapproves of my hair colour.'

'You mother _does_ seem to disapprove of your hair colour,' Spock told her.

Christine laughed. 'She bought me my first bottle of dye, Spock,' she told him. '_Go catch a man with it_, she said. _No man's ever liked brown_.'

'I have never seen your hair brown,' Spock commented, reaching a hand up to catch his fingers in the fine strands. 'I imagine it would suit you.'

'Well, when you can see, I'll let it grow brown,' she promised him. 'But I'm not changing it for now. _I_ like it blonde.'

Spock was silent for a moment, contemplating, then he said abruptly, 'What would I do without you, Christine?'

'Just what you did before we got together,' she said practically. 'You'd carry on perfectly.'

Spock shook his head. 'I am too used to your presence. I would flounder without you.'

'I hope not!' she said seriously. 'Spock, I don't do _too_ much for you, do I?'

'No, Christine,' he promised her. 'You assist me when I need it. That is all. If you were not here to help me, I would almost certainly be forced to rely on a stranger for assistance.'

'Well, all right,' she said, stroking her hand over his thigh. She removed it as if she had been burnt as the door opened again and her mother entered, carrying with her the scent of coffee and cookies.


	10. Chapter 9

The afternoon became more fascinating for Spock once he decided to view it as an outsider observing human family relations. He could not work out Christine's relationship with her mother, which seemed to be characterised simultaneously with affection and frustration. He could tell that Christine felt criticised by her mother, but he could also tell that the mother was fighting with her own insecurities, something of which Christine seemed largely unaware. Perhaps there was a lingering jealousy that Christine had embarked on a career in space, on the fleet's flagship, while the mother had always remained here in this one small town on the New England coast.

They sat in the house's dining room, a rather close seeming room, as Dr Chapel served vegetable bake and fries and offered them wine to drink, and engaged in curious talk about their lives aboard ship.

'Of course Chrissie's been smitten with you for years,' she remarked, and Spock could feel the suppressed protest to the right of him.

'Yes, I was well aware of that,' he nodded, and the spike of agitation rose again, much to his bemusement.

'She always did take her time,' Dr Chapel commented.

'Mother,' Christine protested. Spock touched her leg under the table and projected reassuring thoughts.

'It was not a question of taking time, but of waiting for the _right_ time,' Spock corrected her. It seemed wise to change the subject. 'Dr Chapel, have you always practised in this town?'

'Oh, we used to travel around some before Chrissie came along, and a little when she was young,' Dr Chapel said wistfully. 'But then we set up practice here and I worked in the hospital while Greg – that's my husband – did his research. He'd probably be fascinated by this treatment that Christine was telling me about last night. It's some kind of virus that will give you your sight?'

Spock tilted his head to one side. 'Not exactly. The idea is that the virus will attack the opaque cells and weaken them enough either that the body will be able to destroy them with its own mechanisms or that very low level disruptor energy will be able to destroy them.'

'Well, it does sound fascinating,' Dr Chapel reiterated.

'Mother, when will dad be home?' Christine asked abruptly.

'Oh, not until very late, I expect,' her mother replied. 'He's been coming home practically at midnight every night this week.'

'I'd like to see him while we're here,' Christine said.

Spock turned towards her a little. There was a tension underlying her voice that she was obviously struggling to keep under control.

'I'm sure you'll see him at the weekend if not before,' her mother assured her. 'Now, Spock. Tell me more about this virus?'

'There is little more to tell,' Spock said honestly. 'Dr Alunan, the scientist who has developed the virus, is remarkably reticent to share his research.'

'Hmm,' Dr Chapel said, and Spock was reminded forcefully of her daughter, so much so that a smile almost reached his lips.

'That is Christine's opinion on the matter,' he told her. 'I anticipate finding out more about the virus the next time that we visit Dr Alunan's lab. Currently he is running tests on samples I have provided.'

Dishes clattered on the table, and Dr Chapel said, 'Well, it looks like we're all done here. I got a lovely cake in for dessert. Chrissie, why don't you come help me in the kitchen?'

Spock sat in silence as Christine left the room with her mother. The tensions in their relationship fascinated him. It was obvious that there was love between the two women, but Christine seemed absolutely overwhelmed.

While he waited he took his padd out of his pocket and touched the screen to see if Dr Alunan had sent any updates about his research. There was a brief message saying that the test results had been satisfactory, and asking if Spock would return in two days' time for another meeting. That was all. He thought that would please Christine, though. A large amount of the tension she was feeling was fed by her anxiety over this treatment, he was sure. She was almost more anxious for him to see than he was himself.

'Coming down thick again outside,' Dr Chapel remarked, coming back into the room.

Spock turned his ear toward the window, which he could sense by the small increase in light and the wave of cold that came through the glass. There was no audible sign of the snow.

'Are you really going to walk back in that?' she continued. 'It's almost a foot deep on the sidewalk. Chrissie? Why don't you let me give you a lift home?'

'I think it would be wise, Christine,' Spock nodded.

He caught a wave of feeling from her. She just wanted to be home, right now, without waiting for the pleasantries of cake and coffee. There was nothing to be done about it, however. He could invent an urgent reason to return, but it would be discourteous in the extreme. Instead he sat and politely ate the cake, declining to mention the effect that the small amount of sugar in the cookies and now the rather large amount in the cake might have on his cerebral cortex.

After the ride home he tumbled in through the door with Christine swiftly and unsteadily, feeling highly relieved to get out of the cold, drifting snow which had been quite enough even after the short walk from Dr Chapel's skimmer.

'You ate too much cake, didn't you?' Christine asked with a laugh as he stumbled unsteadily. Her mood had perceptibly lifted since they had left her mother in the skimmer. 'Gosh, I'm glad mother wouldn't come in.'

'As am I,' Spock said, unzipping his coat and peeling it off. Christine took it from him and hung it up as he removed another layer, until he was dressed in no more than dark trousers and a slim black t-shirt.

'You felt the same, huh?' Christine asked him.

He raised an eyebrow. 'I was aware of how _you_ felt,' he corrected her. 'It was for your sake that I am glad.'

'Oh, but she's so – ' She trailed off, apparently unable to voice her feelings.

'So,' Spock repeated, reaching out to touch her arm. She had shed her extraneous layers of clothing too and so he touched bare flesh. A thrill of electricity ran through him, and he shivered. 'I did eat too much cake,' he told her. 'I feel quite – liberated.'

She laughed. 'Well that'll balance out the wine I drank. You know, I was drinking to block out mother. She's so – '

'You have already expressed the opinion that your mother is _so_,' Spock reminded her.

'Well,' she said, but Spock didn't afford her the opportunity to speak further. Instead he drew her close to him and pressed his lips against hers, tasting her lipstick and the natural tastes of her mouth behind. She was wearing some kind of scent that had been teasing at the edges of his senses all day. Desire exploded in him as his fingertips drifted through her hair and picked up waves of her thoughts and feelings through the thin layer of her skull. His hands moved down, across the bare skin of her arms to find the loose gauzy top that she had been wearing under all those winter coverings, and then the fastening of the trousers that hugged her slim waist.

'Oh my gosh, Spock, I should feed you cake more often,' she gasped.

Spock gave a kind of growl and pushed her back toward the bedroom door.

'Let me make sure the drapes are shut,' she said quickly. 'Don't want to give the neighbours a show.'

Spock followed her into the bedroom and divested himself of his remaining clothing as he heard the curtains swish shut over the windows. He felt hot and full of need and he thought he could have done anything regardless of whether or not the windows were covered. He lowered Christine onto the bed and carefully peeled the rest of the clothes from her body, and lay over her, breathing in her scent and letting his hands roam over the smoothness of her body.

'I am glad about the cake,' he murmured, bringing his mouth down over the soft mound of her breast as her hand slipped between his legs and began to arouse him further.

'Not gladder than me,' she laughed.

''''''

Later they sat on the bed in a warm glow, Spock's arm around Christine's naked back and her head resting on his chest. It was supremely calm and he could have fallen into sleep, although the effects of the sugar he had consumed were wearing off and a part of his brain itched to move into action and do further work on Dr Alunan's research.

'Oh, not now,' Christine pleaded.

A smile touched his lips. It was always satisfying to feel that a thought had effortlessly slipped between them.

'No, not now,' he acknowledged, his voice a low rumble. He moved his hand to delicately trace his fingers through her hair, finding a slight tangle and pulling it out with great gentleness.

'Let's just stay in bed all afternoon and let it snow and snow and snow,' she said. He could feel her voice through his chest and the movement of her jaw against his skin.

'We can hardly affect the weather whatever we choose to do,' Spock pointed out.

She swatted him lightly. 'Need we choose to do anything?'

'We need not. Not at this moment,' he acknowledged. 'But later I must contact my grandparents. I'm sure there is a certain etiquette at hand now that we have seen both your mother and my cousin. Grandmother wanted me to visit as soon as she knew I was coming.'

'Oh, your grandparents will wait,' Christine murmured.

'Time is not on their side,' Spock pointed out.

Christine snorted. 'Spock, you have such a romantic way of putting things. I'll tell you what. I'll go make us some coffee and we can go over some of those details from Dr Alunan and then you can call your grandparents and arrange a visit. How's that?'

'That would be satisfactory,' Spock nodded. It would be good to start making more progress having wasted most of the day in social activities.

He pulled on his clothes and followed Christine through into the living area. She opened up the partition that separated kitchen and living room and Sacha ran out of the room, shaking herself and pressing her nose into Spock's hand. He stroked her and then went to sit down on one of the low couches, and sat listening to Christine bustling about with the coffee maker. He did not yet have the intimate familiarity with this apartment that he preferred, and it was far easier for now to stay out of Christine's way than offer to help.

The rich scent of the grounds filled the air as he heard her pop open a jar. Coffee was one human vice that Spock had learnt to appreciate deeply in his time in Starfleet.

'I wonder if Dr Alunan would be amenable to a discourse via comm,' Spock mused.

'Oh, I doubt it,' Christine said, her voice cutting above the chinks of china and the sound of water starting to boil. 'He's not amenable to much at all.'

'Hmm,' Spock said. His padd was on his lap and he was running his fingers over the diagram of the structure of Dr Alunan's virus, transposing the sensation into a more complete image in his mind. It started to take on the appearance of a spiky ball which he revolved in his mind, examining the genetic material safe within its protein coat and trying to determine whether this was something of Alunan's own construction, or something developed from another, natural, virus. Christine would probably be better placed than he to discern such subtleties. He would consider contacting McCoy, but he had promised Alunan that his research would go no further than himself and Christine.

He closed his eyes, seeing the virus more and more clearly in his mind, turning it and examining it and trying to discern exactly how it would attack the cells in his eyes. There was a certain logic behind the proposal. The main concern was in making sure the virus was innocuous to the rest of the body's cells, and most importantly of all not harmful to anyone else.


	11. Chapter 10

'I will let you know when I am ready to leave,' Spock said to Christine on the door step of his grandparents' house. He touched his hand briefly to the cell-comm in his pocket. After the usefulness of his mother's cell on Vulcan only a month ago he had invested in one himself, but this time it was properly adapted for sightless users.

'All right, Spock,' Christine said, touching his arm briefly, self-conscious before these two elderly people who were watching her with deep interest. 'It was very nice to meet you, Mrs Grayson, Mr Grayson,' she said with a smile. 'I'll see you later.'

'Of course, dear,' Mrs Grayson replied distractedly, seeming occupied now with taking responsibility for her blind grandson as Christine moved away from him.

Mr Grayson gave her nothing more than a rather self-conscious nod, and stumped back into the house, knocking snow off his shoes.

'I'm all right, grandma,' Spock said quietly, feeling his grandmother's concern. 'Sacha will guide me.'

'Of course,' his grandmother said quickly. 'Well, come on into the sitting room, out of this cold,' she said, reaching behind him to close the door as he moved forward into the house. 'On the right. Nothing's changed much since you were last here. Do you remember?'

'Very well,' Spock nodded with concealed amusement. It was true that he had not spent long periods of time in this house, but it was still very familiar to him.

'Sit down, Spock. There's an armchair just here,' she said as they entered the sitting room.

Spock reached out a hand.

'If you would put my hand to the top of the back,' he said, and his grandmother's hand closed around his, cool and frail. She gave his hand a quick, firm squeeze before touching it to the chair, and he slid his fingers down to find the depth of the seat. As he sat Sacha lay down on the floor with a satisfied grunt, and he released her harness.

'How long is it since we last saw you, Spock?' his grandmother asked as she took the seat beside his.

'It was the fourth of July, ten years ago,' Spock said instantly.

'Ah, yes – when that lovely Captain Pike let you beam down to see us,' she smiled. 'He was a good man, wasn't he? And you're under Captain Kirk now? That whizz-kid captain that everyone's talking about. Youngest in the fleet, isn't he?'

'That is true,' Spock nodded.

'And how do you get on with him?' she asked conspiratorially, leaning closer. 'I've heard he's very emotional, very reckless.'

'I would count Captain Kirk as my closest friend,' Spock said honestly. 'He has proved the value of that friendship many times over in the past year.'

'Tea?' his grandfather's voice interjected from another doorway, and Spock turned towards him.

'Yes, thank you,' he said. 'Black, if you will.'

'Don't worry about grandpa,' his grandmother said in a quiet voice as the man stumped out of the room again. 'He's just taking some time getting used to all this.'

Spock nodded. He had not realised that there was anything amiss behind his grandfather's typically gruff manner. He was quite used, however, to old friends and acquaintances' attitudes to him being awkward for a time on meeting him without sight. His time at Gol had taught him to better control his own reactions, but he could not control those of others.

'And how is your mother?' she asked him.

'Mother was very well when I last saw her,' Spock told her. 'As is Sarek. I believe they're hoping to visit Earth within the next year.'

He had no time to suppress a start when something small and agile leapt onto his lap, and he touched tentatively with his hand to find a cat with thick, short fur settling itself contentedly on his legs.

'Oh, that's just Mogget,' his grandmother said quickly. 'Is it all right for him to – ?'

'It is fine,' Spock nodded, sinking his fingertips into the insulating fur to scratch the cat as it purred. 'Mogget,' he mused. 'I believed the earth colloquialism was mogg_y_?'

'Oh, it's just a cat from a book,' she smiled. 'A childhood favourite.'

Spock's eyebrow quirked upward. 'Then the cat is white?' he asked.

His grandmother laughed. 'I'm glad to see your mother didn't let you neglect Earth classics growing up,' she said, touching a hand to his knee. 'Yes, the cat is white. He wandered in one day a few years back, and I haven't the heart to turn him out.'

Sasha sat up with a jealous whine and the cat suddenly stood up, becoming stiff and fluffed up. He hissed, then left the room with a flurry of claws on carpet. Then his grandfather came in with the tea, and sat down with a grunt of effort.

'Thank you, grandfather,' Spock said, and the man muttered, 'Not at all, not at all. Here you are, dear. That's your tea on the side table.'

'Thank you, love.'

Spock's grandfather grunted again, and settled back in his chair. Spock was aware that was probably the last he would hear from him for a while, for he was not a great talker.

'My eyes are not so good themselves, Spock,' his grandmother explained with a smile, putting her hand in his. 'They can do a lot for us old folks but without a full eye transplant they'll never give me twenty-twenty vision, and I intend to die with the eyes I was born with. I dare say you're better at getting around than I am.'

'That may be so,' Spock acknowledged sombrely.

He closed his hand around his grandmother's, feeling the sinews and veins and bones through paper skin. Her hand was cool, as humans always were, and it felt astoundingly old – but it also felt strong and dependable, just as it always had. _From this hand, came my hands, in part,_ he thought sentimentally.

'So who's this woman you've gotten yourself involved with?' she asked him. 'She looks like your mother, from what I can see of her.'

Spock allowed a hint of a smile.

'She is the head nurse on the _Enterprise_,' he told her. 'And perhaps you are correct. She does, in some superficial ways, resemble mother. She is human, from this area of Earth. In fact, by a remarkable coincidence her parents live only a few streets away from this house. The doctors Chapel.'

'Oh!' his grandmother said in sudden surprise. 'The Chapels, eh? I know of them. Nice house, but they're a little bit – reserved – I always thought. Well, their daughter seems nice enough, anyway.'

'She meets the correct criteria,' Spock nodded.

'Oh, so romantic,' his grandmother laughed. 'You remind me of your father. Gosh, I remember him at your parents' wedding – if you could call it that. Hot as fifteen hells, dust in everything. And when he first set eyes on your mother when she came out in her wedding finest, he nodded, and said, 'It is sufficient for the occasion.' And your mother – she smiled as if he'd just told her she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.'

Spock's eyebrow quirked upward at his imagined vision of that event. He had seen pictures of his parents' wedding, of his mother looking astonishingly exotic in her traditional silver Vulcan gown, with her human-pink skin and blue eyes.

'He just had,' he said solemnly.

'Well, perhaps he had,' she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. 'Ah, little boy. I'm sorry to see you blind. I really am. But you make the most of it, don't you?'

Spock inclined his head. 'I do what I can. I have managed to continue in my role on the _Enterprise_. I am rather more limited in many areas of life, but I do manage. And we are making progress in our attempts to find a cure.'

'I don't know about modern medicine,' his grandfather suddenly interjected. 'I just don't know...'

'Progress will always have its detractors,' Spock nodded. 'But I, for one, am quite satisfied with modern medicine. It has saved my life on more than one occasion.'

'Well, in an unnatural place like space,' his grandfather began.

Spock opened his mouth, about to question in what way space was unnatural, since it was the place in the universe least affected by sentient beings and their lives. He changed his mind, and instead asked, 'Grandfather, you have never met the _Enterprise_'s Chief Medical Officer, have you? I believe you would get along.'

'Oh, I've never gotten along with doctors,' his grandfather muttered. 'Poking, prying, always sticking needles into you.'

'Why don't you come for a walk with me, Spock,' his grandmother said suddenly, taking his hand again and encouraging him up out of his seat. 'Come down onto the beach. I could do with a strong arm to stop me slipping over on the sand.'

He lifted an eyebrow, and inclined his head. 'Sacha will enjoy the run, I am sure, if it's permissible to let her loose?'

'Oh, no trouble with that – people run their dogs down there all the time.'

Spock followed her as she walked out of the room and allowed her to help him with layering up for the cold. She felt almost like a dry leaf clinging to his arm. It had been a long time since he had last seen her, and she seemed to have thinned out into a hollow being in the intervening time.

'Never mind grandfather,' she said conspiratorially as they got outside. 'Once he gets going on space and doctors – well – I don't think he could ever quite forgive interplanetary travel for taking our little girl away. You could count on one hand the amount of times I've gotten him off this planet, and one of them was for Manda's wedding.'

As Spock recalled, the garden sloped gently down towards the sea, and was separated from the beach by a wooden paling fence, and a long path that wound down between rocky outcrops to sand and shingle strips. The path gave him some pause, especially with the trampled snow that clung to its irregularities, but his grandmother turned out to be an astonishingly attentive guide, despite her age.

'There, Spock,' she said as they reached the tide-washed sand. 'Beautiful as always, isn't it?'

Spock raised an eyebrow a small amount.

'Ahh, there's your father again, Spocky,' she said.

'Grandma – ' he began.

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she smiled. 'But I called you that as a two-year-old toddling about in that garden out there, and I've never stopped calling you that in my head. You've got to allow some things to spill out from my poor senile mind.'

'You are far from senile,' Spock said firmly.

She gave a small laugh.

'Stand still, Spock,' she said, touching the arm she held with her free hand. 'Listen, and breathe the air, and raise your eyebrow in your father's way and tell me that the beach isn't still beautiful.'

Spock tilted his head, listening to the suck and hiss of winter waves crashing on shingle, and inhaling the scent of salt and seaweed whipped up by brisk winds.

'I cannot do that,' he said. 'I do still find it pleasant. But cold, at this time of year.'

'Then we'd best keep walking, hadn't we? We can walk along the beach, then loop back through town. I need to pick up some groceries.'

'I assume there is a jewellery store in town, grandma?' Spock asked, turning his head towards her.

'Oh, yes,' she said instantly. 'There's a cheap place up on Seaboard. You wouldn't want to go there… But there's a nice, traditional place on Main Street, and another a little further down that makes more modern designs – lovely ones, though. Why? Are you thinking of buying your girl an engagement ring?' she asked slyly.

'Not an engagement ring,' Spock said quickly, the tips of his ears colouring very slightly. 'But perhaps a ring, or some earrings. Is your sight good enough to help me pick something out?'

'Oh, it's good enough for that, Spock,' she smiled. 'Besides, I always carry a magnifying glass. It comes in handy.'

'Good,' Spock nodded, following her movements as she continued across the soft sand.

He wondered what kind of jewellery would please Christine the most. He had never bought a present for a woman before – at least, not apart from sundry family members. He certainly had never bought a present for someone with whom he was involved in a romantic relationship. He had so rarely seen her out of uniform. The last time he had literally _seen_ her dressed in her own clothes had been so long ago that he could not recall her jewellery, nor even if she had worn any.

Before long they found themselves in a small jewellery store, and Spock was trying to describe Christine to the owner. The thought of buying Christine jewellery had been a whim, and he had not put the prolonged consideration into it which he would naturally prefer, but it was good to be able to take the opportunity of a sighted companion to help him.

'She is human. Fair-skinned, with hair that is blonde, but naturally brown, and with blue eyes. Her features are elongated, I would say, rather than rounded. Can you advise me on what jewellery may suit her?'

The man seemed baffled. 'I don't suppose you have a picture?' he asked finally.

Spock was silent for a beat, then said in a level voice, 'I am blind. What use would I have for a picture?'

'Er, of course,' the man stammered, taken aback.

Spock's grandmother stepped forward.

'Huey,' she said, taking over the conversation. 'This is Spock, my grandson. Do you remember him? Used to visit me here when he was so high?'

'Oh – your grandson, Mrs Grayson,' the man said quickly, but there was puzzlement clear in his tone. 'But – I've only been here for five years, Mrs Grayson.'

'Oh, of course,' she smiled. 'My memory – I'm sorry. Yes, you moved up in sixty-four, didn't you? Well, then. I'd like for you to meet Spock. Spock, this is Hugh Williams.'

Spock nodded politely, but the man asked quickly, '_Commander_ Spock, of the _Enterprise_, sir? Mrs Grayson, is the Ambassador of Vulcan your _son-in-law_?'

'The very same. I can't believe we never got onto the subject, Huey. But that's beside the point, right now. Can you show me some earrings in sapphire? Sapphire and silver would suit her, I think. And a necklace too. May as well keep our options open.'

'And – the price range?' the man asked cautiously.

Spock shook his head. 'If you will simply show us your samples. The price is largely immaterial.'

'Of course, Commander Spock,' the man said brightly, with the alacrity born of suddenly being introduced to a wealthy customer. 'I'll see what I've got.'


	12. Chapter 11

This time in London the day was bright and almost felt hot compared to the dry freeze of New England. Spock could feel the warmth of the sun on his cheek as they walked through the streets. He had grown so used to wearing two or three layers that this was almost uncomfortably warm.

'It's nice just to not be kicking through snow all the time,' Christine said. 'I must've been out of New England too long. I'd forgotten how you can get tired of snow, snow, and snow.'

'Humans do have a propensity for growing tired of sameness,' Spock nodded. 'I have always found predictability reassuring.'

'Well, Vulcans _are_ the masters of predictability,' Christine laughed. 'But I didn't think you were so keen on the snow?'

'It's not my preferred weather,' Spock nodded, 'but at least I know what to prepare for.'

'Here we are,' Christine said, turning to the left. 'Just outside the lab.'

'Thank you, Christine,' Spock nodded. He had left Sacha behind, in deference to Dr Alunan's aversion to her, and was relying entirely on Christine's guidance.

'Think we're going to make any breakthroughs today?' she asked as the crossed the lobby and waited for the lift.

Spock's eyebrow rose. 'I find Dr Alunan extremely difficult to judge,' he admitted. 'I will be content with any kind of progress.'

Dr Alunan was as irascible as usual, but he at least consented to sit and discuss his work on the virus for some time.

'I'm working on making it inert, totally inert, except for the effect on the mutated cells in the eyes,' he told Spock. 'Very difficult work. Very complicated. But I do believe I have a working version. I'm almost certain I have a strain that will do the job.'

'That is encouraging,' Spock nodded. 'But how do you propose testing this strain?'

'Oh, I have methods,' Alunan muttered, clattering with what sounded like glass containers on his desk. 'I've tried it on cloned eyeballs. See here.'

Christine sucked in breath momentarily, then told Spock in a low voice, 'He's got about fifteen apparently human eyeballs in an incubator. They appear to be in various stages of treatment.'

'Yes, look, here,' Alunan said, becoming more enthused. 'This first, here. I treated this one three days ago. It was the first I infected with the virus. The cells are almost completely atrophied and the eye is recovering a normal appearance. The others are all in varying stages with improved strains of the virus. I infected each one at intervals of six hours.'

'You can't get much sleep,' Christine said lightly.

'My sleep patterns are quite, quite different to yours,' Alunan replied in a rather bristling voice.

'Enaxorians usually take a series of sleeps of up to two hours intermittently through the circadian cycle,' Spock told her. 'Quite efficient for scientific work that requires frequent attention.'

'Yes, yes, which is why we need to work instead of chatter, chatter,' Alunan said impatiently. 'I want to discuss all of the details of this latest strain with you, Commander Spock, and find the best possible version for your hybrid Vulcan-Human cells. I am very optimistic about this strain. Very optimistic.'

The next few hours were filled with quiet, in-depth work of the kind that was a balm to Spock's logical mind. It felt like a long time since he had been given the opportunity to work like this, and the combination of his insights with Christine's bio-medical knowledge and Alunan's expertise meant that they progressed swiftly.

'But now I must ask you to leave,' Alunan said finally, ushering the pair towards the door. 'We will arrange again, yes? Call me later and we will arrange a time.'

It was already growing dark outside, and Spock capitulated to Christine's desire to walk for a while by the Thames. While the sight of light rippling on the water and the lit up ancient buildings was lost on him, he could feel her happiness at the sight, and it was pleasant to be walking somewhere a little warmer than their residence in New England. Every breath back there made Spock's lungs shudder. Here there was an unpleasant dampness in the air, but at least that air was not gratingly cold.

They stopped at a bench at the riverside and sat down, and Spock sat listening to the soft sounds of the river, which were barely audible above the sound of river craft and shuttles and the chatter of other pedestrians. Somewhere to his left and behind him a lone violinist was playing and a small crowd seemed to be gathering, since the music really was very good.

'Oh, this is beautiful,' Christine sighed.

Spock touched his hand briefly to her arm, and then reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a slim box. With the advice of the jeweller and his grandmother he had finally settled upon a long and intricate pair of sapphire earrings, the jewels set in Andorian silver, which was said to have just the right level of impurities to reflect a light resembling the light of the moon.

'Christine,' he said, offering her the box.

He felt her quick spike of joy and surprise. She opened the box and gasped.

'Oh, Spock, these are beautiful! Whenever did you get them?'

'I asked grandmother for assistance when I visited with her,' Spock told her. 'I have been assured that the earrings will suit you.'

'Oh, they're wonderful,' she said, planting a quick kiss on his cheek. 'Really, they're beautiful. I wish I was wearing something a little more stylish. I'd put them on right now.'

'I am sure we can find an occasion for you to wear them,' Spock promised her. 'Dinner in a restaurant, perhaps?'

'Oh, yes,' she smiled. 'That would be lovely. I'll put them away now. I couldn't wear them with these old things, but I have the perfect dress back home to go with them.'

'Then it would be a good idea to walk back to the transporter terminal and return to our apartment to get ready for dinner,' Spock told her. 'Perhaps your mother can recommend a restaurant.'

'Oh, why don't you call your cousin or your grandparents for that?' Christine demurred. 'Really, I think I've had as much of mother as I can stand for the week.'

'If you wish,' Spock nodded.

Christine's relationship with her mother continued to baffle him, although when he compared it to his own relationship with Sarek it made a little more sense. Familial ties were a two sided thing, and he didn't care to probe too deeply into his own emotions regarding his parents. Neither did he really care to call Billy to ask for restaurant recommendations, but he judged him more likely to dine out regularly than his frail grandparents.

'You know, we should get together for a meal, Spock. You and Chrissie, me and the family,' Billy said enthusiastically when Spock contacted him. 'We've got years to catch up on. Barlow's is great for large parties, and I'm sure they have a good veggie section on the menu.'

'I wanted a recommendation for a good restaurant for a meal for two,' Spock reminded his cousin patiently. 'If you are intent on a family meal we can arrange that at a later date.'

'Oh, well, then why don't you go to the Seaboard, down on Exit Boulevard?' Billy suggested. 'That's a nice place, good food, fancy, you know. You two lovebirds enjoy yourselves.'

'Thank you, we will,' Spock said, feeling vaguely uncomfortable at Billy's language, especially as he was aware that Christine could hear what Billy was saying. 'Spock out.'

Christine laughed as he closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

'You know, off ship we usually say goodbye on the phone,' she told him.

Spock sighed. 'It achieves the same end,' he pointed out.

'True,' Christine agreed, 'but humans do like to stick to certain social conventions.' She hesitated a moment, and Spock waited, certain that she was undergoing some kind of dilemma.

'What is it, Christine?' he asked.

'Well – I was just thinking,' she said. 'What if we have that family meal tonight, if everyone's free. Get it over with, get the social obligations out of the way, and then it won't be hanging over us. You know your cousin's dying to catch up with you and he'll get you sooner or later.'

Spock considered the idea. A romantic meal for two was far more calculated to appeal to Christine's sensitivities than his own, so if she wanted to 'get it over with,' in her words, then it seemed the logical thing to do.

'Very well,' he nodded. 'I shall call Billy and my grandparents and see if they are amenable.'

''''''''''''

Barlow's was not quite suited to Spock's taste, since it was loud and crowded, but the establishment at least accepted Sacha without question, and as Billy had said, had an extensive vegetarian menu, even including some off-world foods. Sacha lay patiently under the table at Spock's feet and Spock focussed all his attention on Christine as she read the menu to him, leaning close to him to be heard through the noise. Billy's wife was present as were three young children, his grandparents, and his aunt and uncle. He was rather relieved that his cousin Christopher had moved away some years earlier, since his family comprised two partners and a various amount of children and step-children.

'I shall have the avacado salad,' he decided. 'Thank you Christine.'

She touched her hand to his arm and passed him a wordless sense of reassurance. Through her mind and his own senses he could grasp a confused idea of the scene around him, the three children fidgeting in their chairs, his grandparents attempting to talk quietly to each other, his aunt and uncle interjecting with over-loud voices, and Billy and his wife discussing some aspect of the menu in argumentative tones. This was far from the intimate meal that he had imagined for tonight, but Christine had the opportunity to wear her earrings and, as she had said, once this meal was over perhaps the very human, social desire for contact would be somewhat placated.

'So, Spock, tell us all about life on the flagship of the fleet,' his uncle said, leaning forward and cutting across the other chatter.

Spock raised an eyebrow. An open question such as this could take hours to answer.

'Was there anything specific that you wished to know?' he asked, hoping to narrow it down somewhat.

'Oh – well, what about Captain Kirk, eh? What's he really like. You see him on recruitment ads, you know. Hair perfect, smiling down at us all. What's the real man like?'

Spock hesitated. 'He is a very efficient captain,' he said.

He could imagine McCoy, if he were here, harrumphing at that understatement of Kirk's abilities. But really, what more could he say without breaching personal confidences or giving a detailed psychological assessment of his captain?

'I've heard he's quite the womaniser,' his uncle prompted.

'Captain Kirk is fond of the female sex,' Spock acknowledged. 'But I would not say that he is more promiscuous than most humans.'

'Well, I suppose these rumours get magnified through subspace,' his uncle said, sounding rather disappointed. Spock wondered if he would be happier had he suggested that the captain took a new woman in every spacedock and left broken hearts like a trail of supernovas through the galaxy.

'Humans are fond of exaggerating the content of a rumour each time it is passed on,' Spock acknowledged. 'The _Enterprise_ is much like any other ship of the line,' he told his uncle. 'A home and a place of work for various peoples of the galaxy, who go about their lives much as anyone would. There is perhaps a higher general standard of intelligence and application than one would find in a cross section of the people in this restaurant, for example, but I have learnt that people are very similar no matter what planet they were born on or what genetics they possess.'

He was rather relieved when a waiter appeared to take their order and so broke the thread of the conversation. His uncle turned to talking to Christine about her duties on board ship, and Spock was content to sit back and listen to the different strands of chatter without joining in himself. He found himself feeling rather distracted and a little warm, and it was more comfortable to sit quietly and let the humans act as humans would.

The meals came and the chatter subsided somewhat. Spock sat eating with care, very aware of his feeling of distraction. Christine obviously noticed because she touched him on his arm and asked in a low voice, 'Spock, are you all right?'

He flinched away minutely, feeling pain in his right arm as she touched him.

'I am not entirely certain,' he replied. 'I feel somewhat unwell.'

'Do you want to go home?' she asked in a concerned voice, and he shook his head.

'No, it is not that serious,' he assured her.

He returned his attention to his meal, feeling lightly over the salad with his fork. There was a slight queasiness in the pit of his stomach, but no real reason to stop eating. He focussed his attention almost entirely on his food, concerned with continuing to eat in a composed manner, and cut out the conversation around him. Christine returned to her own food, but he could feel her concern.

'I'm calling a cab,' she said finally, as the meal wound down in desserts and coffee. 'There's no need to walk home in this cold.'

'Very well, Christine,' Spock said, surprising her with his acquiescence.

He stood up, and was rather surprised at how nauseous he felt. He suppressed the feeling and took hold of Sacha's harness, and submitted himself to the round of touching and cheek kissing and words of farewell from his family members. It had been pleasant to spend a little time with them, and, as Christine had said, they had 'got it over with' now.

'Christine, would you mind looking at my upper right arm?' he asked once they were back in the quiet apartment and he had shed his layers of outer garments. 'I noticed pain there earlier, and I believe it may be swollen.'

'Of course,' she said, sounding concerned.

Spock stripped his top off and turned to her, and she drew in air between her teeth.

'It does look inflamed,' she said, touching him lightly. 'Do you think you could have been bitten or stung by something?'

'I assume the frigidity of the weather precludes most insect attacks,' Spock reminded her.

'There's a puncture wound near the centre,' she said, looking closer. 'Let me get my medical bag.'

'Very well,' Spock said, and he sat down and waiting.

Christine returned in a moment and held her scanner close to his arm. 'Temperature's a little elevated,' she said. 'Spock – '

'What is wrong, Christine?' he asked, reading the odd tone in her voice.

'Give me a moment and let me compare,' she said..

Spock sat and waited, controlling the seed of frustration at not being able to take Christine's scanner and look at the results himself. He clasped his hands together and sat bare-chested on the settee while Christine walked across the room to access the computer. After a moment she returned and said, 'I thought it looked like that. Spock, this is Dr Alunan's virus. You've been infected.'


	13. Chapter 12

[A.N. Sorry for all the delay. Life, stress, things. I hope to get back to writing soon. Also I do hope to go back through this in the future and flesh it out more.]

Spock sat still for a moment, then touched his hand to the hot and swollen place on his arm.

'Are you certain?' he asked.

'I'm certain,' Christine said grimly, sitting down beside him. 'It matches Alunan's most recent strain exactly. There's a puncture wound at the centre. It must have been a needle or some other sharp object. It certainly wasn't a hypo. Too messy.'

'I would have heard the noise of a hypo,' Spock nodded, pressing his fingers hard onto his arm. He could feel a slight roughness where there must be a little dried blood from the puncture wound.

'Do you remember anything touching your arm?' Christine asked. 'A stumble? An accident?'

Spock shook his head. 'Nothing like that,' he said. 'I very much doubt that this was an innocent accident.'

He sat thinking, remembering how Alunan had clapped his hand onto his arm as they were leaving in an unusually jovial way.

'It was not an accident,' he repeated. 'Alunan struck my arm as we were leaving. He must have injected the virus into my arm as he did so. He was very eager to test the strain.'

'But that's – ' Christine faltered. 'That's – '

'Illegal, underhand, dangerous,' Spock suggested. 'But it has happened. I would suggest our first move be to contact Alunan and speak to him about what he has done.'

'Yes,' Christine said in a musing tone. 'Yes, you're right. But this might be communicable, Spock. We're going to need to contact the transport authorities here and at Euston, the people in Alunan's lab, and – good god,' she said, 'what about the restaurant tonight?'

Spock pressed his lips together. This was proving most awkward.

'First I shall call Alunan,' he said decisively, going over to the comm and sitting down. 'Christine, could you connect me to Dr Aluman's lab?' he asked. The comm in this apartment was not adapted for the visually impaired.

'Of course,' she murmured, leaning over his shoulder and going through the process. 'There,' she said. 'It's going through now.'

Spock nodded acknowledgement and waited for the call to be answered. It rang for a long time. It was the early hours of the morning now in London but he knew that with Alunan's short sleep-wake cycle he was as likely to be in the lab then as at any other time. Regardless, the comm rang and rang.

'Perhaps he's sleeping,' Christine suggested. 'I would be if I were him. It must be 4 a.m. over there.'

'Hmm,' Spock mused. He let the comm continue to ring, and finally the noise cut off and there was a rather breathless voice saying, 'Dr Alunan's research lab. Hello?'

'I must speak to Dr Alunan,' Spock said without preamble. 'It is urgent.'

'Oh,' the woman's voice said. 'Oh, well, I'm afraid that's not possible at the moment.'

'If he is sleeping you will wake him,' Spock told her crisply. Whether it was the urgency of the situation or the virus in his system he felt that he had far less patience than usual.

'No, he's not sleeping,' the woman said. 'I – well, to tell you the truth, he's not sleeping. He's ill. He's was taken to the University College Hospital about half an hour ago.'

Spock's spine straightened. 'Explain,' he said.

'Can I ask who you are, sir?' the woman asked cautiously.

'I am Commander Spock. I have been working with Dr Alunan on his research,' Spock told her crisply.

'Oh, well that's fine,' the woman said, sounding greatly relieved. 'That's great. Perhaps you can be of help. We're afraid the doctor accidentally got infected with the virus he's been working on.'

'Accidentally,' Christine harrumphed from behind Spock's shoulder.

Spock frowned. 'It is very likely that the doctor infected himself quite deliberately,' he said to the woman on the other end of the comm. 'It is also very likely that he deliberately infected me when I was in the lab.' He stopped and drew in breath as an intense wave of nausea came over him. 'Do you have any information on treatment for this virus?' he asked.

'Spock, are you all right?' Christine asked quietly from behind him, and he nodded tightly.

'I don't know any more than you,' the woman said. 'Dr Alunan was very close with his experiments.'

Spock sighed. 'Do you have any information on how infectious this disease might prove to be?' he asked.

He drew in a deep breath again, feeling distinctly unwell. Christine put her hand on his shoulder and said, 'Spock, go lie down. I'll talk to her and get all the information I can.'

'No,' he said. 'No, I should not – '

But another wave of sickness came over him, and he felt his skin begin to prickle with heat. He did not feel totally able to take in everything that was said to him, and it was vital to look at this problem clearly.

'Very well,' he nodded finally, with great reluctance. 'Take over.'

He vacated the seat and moved unsteadily to the bedroom, where he lay down on top of the bedclothes and listened to Christine talking urgently on the comm in the other room. He tried to listen intently but the illness was coming over him in waves and the sound seemed to slip away into a muffled blur. He was aware some time later of the sound of voices and hands touching him, manhandling him onto something that was relatively hard and cold. Christine's voice rose above the others saying clearly, 'We're moving you to the hospital, Spock. It's just a precaution. You don't need to worry.'

He could feel a bitter taste in his mouth as if he had vomited, but he was completely unaware of such an event occurring. He turned his head, trying to work out where Christine was. He could hear Sacha's claws ticking on the hard floor but could not quite manage to form words. There was no need to leave instructions for her care. He knew that Christine would look after her. Christine's hand slipped into his and he gave pressure on her fingers, then let go. A blanket was wrapped over him, straps secured, and a moment later he was being carried out into the cold outdoors and wet flakes of snow were drifting onto his face. He wondered what time it was. He seemed to have lost his time sense in that fevered sleep, and now the cold outside was making him shiver despite the insulated blanket over the top of him.

Christine watched in concern as they loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance. She was certain that Spock had understood what she had said but the unknown nature of this virus was a worry. She was torn between staying with him and remaining behind in order to try to sort out some of the chaos that the virus had left behind. She had been successful in contacting most of the people who had attended the dinner that evening, but it was by no means certain that they were the only people who had been exposed. Dr Alunan's aide couldn't be sure how communicable the virus might be, and it seemed that the only thing that could be done was to wait.

She hovered between getting into the ambulance and going back into the house, and then one of the medical technicians said, 'You'd better come, ma'am. We need to be sure you haven't caught this too.'

'Can I use a comm there?' she asked crisply. 'It's imperative that I contact people about this.'

'Yes, of course,' the man nodded. 'There'll be a comm available in Commander Spock's room.'

She looked back at the house briefly, then called Sacha to her, explaining quickly, 'She's Commander Spock's guide dog. There isn't anyone else to take care of her.'

The man demurred for a moment, then said, 'I guess that's fine if she's a service dog. You can arrange care for her later if you need to.'

'All right,' she nodded. She was already holding a small bag containing Spock's cane and a few necessities in it. Sacha came to her and together they climbed up into the back of the ambulance. The dog sat down with her head resting on the gurney close to Spock's own head, and Christine sat in one of the seats nearby. She was not overwhelmed with concern because at the moment Spock's symptoms were not severe, but she couldn't be sure what might develop.

At the hospital she accessed the comm in Spock's room and began again at the careful process of trying to establish whether or not this virus was likely to spread. Tiredness was aching through her body and she wanted to just lie down and sleep, but this was too important to let go. The staff in the hospital were capable but were not exactly bio-medical researchers, and could not help much beyond making sure that Spock was comfortable.

She sighed and looked at him between calls. He was lying very still, his face pale, eyes closed. He was sleeping rather than unconscious, at least. A hundred other times in sick bay flitted through her mind when Spock had been cast down by injury or some unknown alien virus. She had been through this so many times before. But Spock had always recovered. He had always recovered.

She turned back to the comm, where she was trying again to contact Dr Alunan's lab to discover what his condition was now and if there was any extra information that could be extracted from his records. She found herself making contact much sooner this time since it was now morning in London. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock that hung on the wall opposite Spock's bed. Five a.m. She would have loved to have been asleep in bed.

'Look, can you just send all of Dr Alunan's records to me here?' she asked the lab tech who had answered her call, irritation and tiredness edging her voice.

'I'm sure that the doctor wouldn't be happy at all about that,' the man said doubtfully.

She rubbed her hand over her face. She had washed off all of her make up earlier and didn't care how tired or dishevelled she looked. She just wanted answers.

'I don't give a _damn_ how happy he would be about it,' she said sharply. 'He has deliberately infected a person and we need to know if this thing's going to spread. We could be looking at an epidemic. He lost the right to secrecy when he infected Spock.'

'Now, that's a serious allegation to make,' the man said doubtfully, but by the way his eyes were flicking away from the screen Christine was sure that he suspected that the allegation was true.

'It's a serious thing to do to another person,' Christine replied tartly. 'Now, I want those records over here in the next half hour or I'll be forced to go through legal means to get hold of them.'

She had no idea what legal means she might have at her disposal, but the threat seemed to give the man pause. His eyes flicked away from the screen again and she had the sense that he was fiddling with his hands just out of view. Then he said, 'All right. All right, Lieutenant Chapel. I'll have them sent over.'

Christine smiled. She had wondered if introducing herself with her rank would help when she opened the call, and she got the sense that it had. Maybe the man thought that she could bring the weight of Starfleet to bear against Dr Alunan's lab.

She cut the communication and called up the hospital in London to see if anything more could be discovered about Alunan's reaction to the virus. There were even more barriers there due to medical confidentiality, even when she stated her medical qualifications and her interest in the case. She felt too tired for these battles. She was used to working long shifts through times that she should be sleeping, but the worry she felt over Spock made her tireder still.

On the floor Sacha looked up at her, then grunted and flopped back and closed her eyes. It was obvious that she thought the lights and activity were completely unnecessary at this time of night.

Christine looked back to the doctor on the screen. Her eyes felt hot with tiredness.

'Is there any way at all that you can let me know something?' she asked. She had already been passed from person to person and had finally been connected with a doctor who had been working directly on Alunan's case.

'If you arrange for Commander Spock's primary physician to contact me,' the woman said, 'then I could discuss details of the case with him. I cannot share it with friends and family who aren't officially part of the team treating Commander Spock.'

Christine felt like punching something. 'I've been working closely with Alunan on this virus,' she said, the frustration tightening her voice.

'I understand that,' the woman nodded, 'but this isn't the lab. This is a hospital, and we're concerned with the patient and patient confidentiality, not with the research he may have been carrying out.'

Christine turned away from the screen momentarily, biting down so hard on her fist that she left bluish tooth marks in the skin.

'Surely you can see that it's all connected?' she asked, trying very hard to stay calm.

'Yes, of course I can,' the woman said. She sounded tired herself. 'But I still don't have the ability to disclose medical records like that. Not to – '

'Friends and family, I know,' Christine sighed.

She glanced at Spock in the bed. He was still sleeping, his vital signs low but steady. She understood why McCoy was so often enraged by red tape and bureaucracy. She bit her lip into her mouth and looked back to the screen. The woman there seemed to soften at the sight of her distress.

'I will share what I can with Commander Spock's physician,' she promised. 'You'll have to see what you can get out of him. And I should tell you one more thing,' she said, leaning a little closer to the comm and lowering her voice. 'I shouldn't be releasing this to anyone but from what I've seen of you I can be pretty sure you're not going to be running to the press. Dr Alunan died half an hour ago. That's why I'm free to talk to you now.'

Christine sucked in breath. She felt as if her heart had suddenly leapt up into her throat.

Trying to keep her voice steady she said, 'Doctor, do you believe that the symptoms that killed him will manifest similarly in a Vulcan-human hybrid?'

The woman shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said tiredly. 'Dr Alunan was Exoxinian and his species has a very unusual method of extracting oxygen in the lungs. I really shouldn't be saying any more, but the virus seemed to break down cells in his lungs which are vital to the transference of oxygen into the blood system. He died of anoxia.'

'Vulcans are far more efficient at extracting oxygen from the air,' Christine mused, glancing at Spock again, her eyes going automatically to the blood oxygenation readings above his head. They seemed steady.

'I will send the data to his doctor,' the woman promised. 'Meanwhile, I'd advise you to keep an eye on his cell integrity. That's all I can do.'


	14. Chapter 13

It was a waiting game, a game in which not much could be done. Christine hated to feel helpless. She yearned after the familiar labs of the _Enterprise_ and the presence of Dr McCoy. The one mercy was that the virus did not appear to be highly contagious. Even those who had been in close proximity to Spock showed no signs of infection under detailed scans. She had been particularly worried for his frail grandparents, who had sat near him at the dinner table last night, but so far not one viral cell could be discovered in their systems.

Christine piped very soft music through the comm system and let it soothe her. She slept for a while, while Sacha slept on the floor. No one seemed to object to her presence, thank god. She hated to think of sending the poor dog to some kind of kennels while Spock was confined in hospital.

Around midday she walked over to the window and looked out over the city. It was a largely low-rise place, and the low flat roofs were drifted with snow. The streets made harsh black lines between blocks. Cleared earlier by hovering maintenance skimmers, they were slowly becoming dusted again with snow. The whole world seemed to be made of snow and straight lines. The snow felt like the only organic thing in existence, and she longed to open the window and breathe in the frigid air, but the room was being kept artificially warm in deference to Spock's biology.

She turned back to look at his bed. A doctor had been in not five minutes ago to check on him personally, although his readings were continuously fed to the nurse's station and could be checked remotely at any time. She was glad this was the kind of place where the staff interacted physically with the patients. Too many overstretched hospitals found themselves becoming more and more disconnected with the actual living flesh they had been built to serve.

She sat down on the moderately comfortable chair by Spock's bed and closed his hand between hers. How many times had she done this? How many times had she sat beside him like a lover when in reality they had not been more than colleagues? At least now she could take his hand without feelings of guilt. It had never quite been ethical for her to treat him as she had, but she had carried on hoping. And now here she was, with the perfect right to press his hand between hers.

She tried to sense something of his mind through the touch. She could feel him there, deep down, as she felt him sometimes in the night when their bodies touched. He was not dreaming, but just sleeping very deeply. There were no thoughts moving in his head. It was not an absence, as such, but just very deep quiet.

'Get better,' she murmured. 'Just get better...'

Spock stirred and murmured something, but she could discern no meaningful words, and he slipped back into sleep.

She took another look at his readings, then straightened up, stood up purposefully, and left the room, leaving Sacha sleeping under the bed. She went to the hospital labs, where staff were trying to discover and manufacture a treatment for the virus. There had been scant hints in what of Dr Alunan's work had been sent to them.

She opened the door and looked round the edge.

'Can I help?' she asked quietly.

A technician turned around and greeted her with a tired smile. Christine had been down to the lab a few times before, but only ever briefly to hear a progress report.

'Oh, Lieutenant Chapel. Really, no – '

'I may be a nurse, but I'm also an accredited bio-medical researcher,' she told the woman seriously. 'I spend a lot of my time on duty working on problems like this and I know Spock's biology better than anyone here.'

'Well, come on in,' the woman said, moving aside a little. She was standing at a high powered microscope. 'I'm Laura, by the way.'

'Christine,' Christine smiled, reaching out to shake the woman's hand. 'Now, let me see. Is that the virus you've got on magnification?'

'The virus and a possible anti-viral agent,' the woman told her. She gestured towards the eyepiece. 'Go ahead. Take a look.'

Christine bent over the microscope, looking at the image in the viewer. The tiny virus cells and the anti-viral agent were artificially coloured by the computer interface and looked like a minute and colourful animation moving about before her eyes.

'It's having some effect,' she murmured. 'But not enough. Have you thought of working some anti-thyalase into it to help break down the outer structure?'

'No,' the woman said with a degree of curiosity in her voice. 'No, that's not something I've come across.'

'Used it a few months ago against a particularly virulent virus on Absolom Seven,' Christine said. 'I didn't know if it had filtered through into mainstream medicine.'

'No, it hasn't,' the woman said. 'Can you show me how to replicate it?'

'I practically know the structure backwards,' Christine said with a grin. Although she didn't like to leave Spock unobserved, it felt so good to be in a lab actually _doing_ something about the problem. 'Where are your medical replicators?'

'Right over here,' the woman said, gesturing towards a pair of glass doors into another part of the lab.

Christine smiled and moved towards the door. The intercom beeped as she did and she paused to listen as the technician called Laura answered it.

'How far have you come with the treatment?' a male voice asked.

'We're getting there,' Laura replied.

'Good, because we've got another patient in.'

Christine turned abruptly, listening intently now.

'Who is it?' she asked in a low voice, and Laura repeated the question, 'Who is it, Jack?'

'An elderly lady. I think the name was Grayson.'

Christine's heart seemed to contract. She waited until Laura had finished on the comm then said, 'That's Spock's grandmother. She's _very_ elderly. We've _got_ to get this thing beat.'

'We will,' Laura said with determination in her voice.

Christine smiled quickly. 'Come on. I'll show you how to replicate the anti-thyalase. Maybe it'll help us find a cure before she gets too bad.'

'We'd better hope we do,' the woman said seriously.

Christine wiped her hand over her forehead. She felt so exhausted that she was sick to the stomach.

'We will,' she said determinedly. 'We have to.'

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Spock felt as if he were surfacing from somewhere deep, deep down. He was hot. His throat was dry and sore. There was something constricting his left arm. He was confused and very thirsty and when he tried to move he couldn't because of that thing holding his arm. He turned his head and tried to sense Christine, but she wasn't there. He coughed, and his saliva tasted odd.

There was a whimper beside him and suddenly a wet nose pushed into his hand, which lay still on the covers. He tried to flex his fingers and found that they worked, although his joints ached. He murmured slightly, and Sacha licked his hand. He was in hospital. He remembered being taken from the house on a gurney, Christine talking to him. The scents were of antiseptic and a lack of nature, and he was mildly surprised that Sacha was here.

Maybe there was a button somewhere to press for assistance. Of course it would be red and very obvious to the sighted, but not to him.

He turned his head and opened and closed his mouth, trying to rid himself of the dry sawdust feeling about his tongue. He blinked at the light in the room that was filtering through into his eyes, and then blinked again.

There was more light there. There was far more light that he was used to. He had grown used to a shifting and blurred awareness of bright light, but not this. There was a clarity. He could see sharp edges, like – He blinked again. It was an edge. It was a line above him, something high up, a whitish colour, as if there were a bar across the ceiling that ended in a bright light, like a lamp on a movable arm.

He tried to sit up, and abruptly remembered again that his arm was held by something. He fumbled at the long, solid device. It felt like a standard medical drip and monitoring system and he found the catch and felt what must have been a needle retract from his arm as the mechanism released. As soon as it did so a soft alarm started to sound and Spock felt a measure of satisfaction. It was perhaps not the conventional way to attract the attention of staff, but it would work.

As he sat he heard the scuttering of Sacha's claws on a hard floor, and the dog pressed her nose into his hand again, whining. He turned his head towards her, blinking, and was aware of brown and black in vague shapes, moving as she moved.

'Fascinating,' he murmured.

He felt across his chest, discovering that he was wearing some kind of lightweight hospital garment that appeared to be a pale green colour. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and as he did so someone came bustling into the room, a confused moving blur of dark blue and white, and a male voice said, 'Oh no, Commander Spock. Lie down. You're not getting up yet.'

'I feel quite well,' Spock countered. That was not entirely a lie. He certainly did not feel as ill as he had. 'Please give me my clothes.'

'I'm Dr Badami,' the man said, coming over to the bed, ignoring Spock's request entirely. 'Lie back down in bed, please, and let me take your readings.'

Spock sighed out air between his lips, and swung his legs back into the bed. He had learnt from his experience with Dr McCoy that sometimes it was quicker to acquiesce at first.

'Doctor, I need to see an ophthalmologist,' he said as the sounds of a scanner beeped softly nearby. 'My sight has improved quite considerably.'

'Well now, that's fascinating,' the doctor said, the tone of his voice changing and the beeping coming closer to Spock's eyes. He had to hold himself from flinching as he saw actual movement before his eyes. He could not tell visually how far away it was and the visual input was distracting his other senses. 'I have your medical records here, Commander Spock. There is a significant improvement in your field of vision and in the opacity of the cells which cause your blindness.'

'Doctor, are you aware of the origin of the virus with which I was admitted?' Spock asked.

'Oh yes,' the doctor said, still studying Spock's eyes. 'Yes, I know it was meant to help with your sight. Meant to, but was put into use far too soon.'

'I should contact Dr Alunan,' Spock said.

The doctor cleared his throat. 'Dr Alunan died of the virus that he infected you with a few days ago,' he said soberly. 'Like I said, it was put into use far too soon. Your Vulcan physiology has resisted the worst effects very well, but the same can't be said for Alunan – or for human victims.'

Spock took in the words about Alunan's death, but his attention sharpened at the mention of other people who had succumbed to the virus.

'Human victims?' he asked. 'I believed that there were no human victims?'

'There was a certain delay in the virus showing up,' Dr Badami told him, 'but it did show up, I'm afraid.'

Spock sat up in bed again, determined this time to make it to his feet.

'How many people are infected?' he asked.

'Just a handful so far,' the doctor said, sounding preoccupied as he finished his scan. 'You're not fit to be up yet, Commander Spock. You need more time to rehydrate for one thing.'

'I am quite fit,' Spock said flatly. 'Please give me my clothes. And if you know there whereabouts of the lady who brought me in – ?'

'That's Lieutenant Chapel, isn't it?' the doctor asked. 'I'm afraid she's quite unwell by now.'

Spock stiffened, forgetting that he was sitting in a scant medical gown and had been asking for his clothes. 'She had the virus?' he asked.

'I'm afraid so,' the doctor nodded. 'She's in a room just down the hall. We're keeping visitors to the minimum to prevent the sickness spreading.'

Spock carefully controlled the anxiety that was starting in his chest and said, 'Miss Chapel is my bondmate, Doctor. Will you tell me the precise details of her condition?'

'I didn't know that, Mr Spock. I'm sorry,' the doctor said sincerely. 'Right now she's very ill. We have four patients, all human, all showing the same symptoms. They're all having trouble with cell cohesion, among other things. There has been some internal bleeding and some breakdown of various membranes in the body. But Lieutenant Chapel was working with some of our research team before she succumbed to the virus. We believe they're well on their way to a cure.'

'I can help,' Spock said firmly.

'No, you can't,' the doctor replied in just as firm a voice. 'You are sick, Mr Spock, and you also need to see a doctor who can tell you more about your sight, since the cells which caused your blindness seem to have reacted to this virus. It is beyond my remit to release you at this time.'


	15. Chapter 14

If it hadn't been for the instruction that Spock had recently received at Gol he didn't think he would have been able to sit through the medical examinations that succeeded his waking up. They were apparently endless. The amount that he could see now should have been a wonder to him but the extra examinations of his eyes were just an added annoyance on top of the regular assessments of how he was recovering from Alunan's virus.

'Commander Spock, if you can just hold still for a few moments longer,' the ophthalmologist was telling him.

Spock resisted a sigh. He was sitting in a place somewhere a few floors and corridors away from the room he had woken up in, while Dr Zhao carefully shone lights into his eyes and murmured things under her breath. He thought that perhaps if he just allowed this one examination he could finally discharge himself. After all, the hospital could not keep him against his will. On the other hand, it seemed that all doctors had the same underhand characteristics of Dr McCoy, and they were managing to keep him here despite his wishes.

'This virus has worked a wonder,' the doctor murmured, bending closer to his face again. He could smell her breath and a fruity scent from her hair, but he could also see blurred features that he was struggling hard to resolve into something that made sense. He had spent so long in blindness that his mind was having trouble reconciling the blurred images before him.

'Do you know, Commander Spock, I think that with at most a couple of short treatments we will be able to restore your sight,' she said.

Spock worked hard on controlling the reaction that sentence elicited from him. It was something that was hardly to be believed.

'That may be so, but I hardly have time at the moment,' he replied, keeping his voice very steady. 'I am needed – '

'Dr Badami warned me about that,' the woman told him with a smile in her voice. 'There is a large team of people working on the remedy for this virus, Commander Spock, and you are not fit to step in as part of it. You were brought down here in a wheelchair, remember?'

'Because the good doctor would not allow me to walk,' Spock said. It was true that he did not feel well, but he was suppressing the weakness and was confident that he would be of great use in the hospital lab.

'Because you are not well enough to walk,' the doctor corrected him.

'I assure you – ' Spock began.

'It's not me you need to assure,' she cut across him. 'I'm only concerned with your eyes. I don't have any responsibility for your fitness otherwise. All I want you to do for now is hold still so I can do a proper examination and then perhaps have a go at shifting some of those cells.'

Spock sighed. It was frustrating being so helpless when he needed to be helping. He kept still and let the doctor continue her examination, but he reached out with his mind, trying to locate Christine somewhere there. There was nothing but a feeling of chaos in response to his reaching out. She was asleep, it seemed, and dreaming feverishly.

'Now then,' the doctor said, cutting into his concentration. 'I'm going to have a go with the disruptor laser. The sooner we do this the better, while the cells in your eyes are still reacting to the virus. I can't predict how successful it will be if I wait until you're virus free. Do you consent to the procedure?

'Do what you must,' Spock said, then realised how ungracious that must sound to human ears. 'I apologise,' he said, admitting, 'I am distracted.'

'I quite understand,' the doctor murmured. 'Now, I'm going to apply some topical anaesthetic to your eyes and begin. Your head will be held still in a frame while I do it. Are you comfortable?'

'Quite,' Spock nodded.

'All right, I'm lowering the frame now,' she said, and Spock felt and half saw an apparatus being pulled down to fit about his head. The doctor tightened soft clamps at his temples and asked, 'Is that comfortable?'

'It is acceptable,' Spock murmured.

'All right. If you open your eyes wide I'll apply the anaesthetic in a spray. Ready?'

'Yes,' Spock said, and forced himself not to blink as a cold spray hit his eyes.

'It should take effect immediately. If you have any pain let me know and I'll stop. And I mean that, Commander. Tell me if there's pain, because it might indicate damage to something other than the intrusive cells. Clear?'

'Perfectly clear,' Spock said, wondering if the woman had had the privilege of treating Vulcans before. She certainly seemed to understand his motivations and reactions, which was both useful and rather consternating depending on what Spock wanted to do. Perhaps with a doctor less understanding of Vulcans he would be out of the room by now and in the lab, helping to work on a cure or vaccine for this virus. However, at least her medical care was sound.

'There will be a certain amount of bright light. I need it to guide the beam,' she said. 'Turning on – now.'

Spock fought the powerful urge to blink as a reddish light abruptly struck the back of his left retina. There was discomfort, but no pain. He was careful to monitor the sensations from the treatment rather than simply suppressing them. It was a very curious experience. When McCoy had applied treatment before he had experienced the odd uncomfortable, almost itching sensation of the beam touching his eyes, but there had been no appreciable change in his vision. It was only sensor readings that had told him that the treatment was having any effect. Now, however, he could see, actually _see, _movement in his vision, dark, amorphous shapes drifting across his pupil, it seemed, out of focus and moving like a deep sea creature.

'This is going wonderfully,' the doctor said, the glee in her voice sounding like that of an excited teenager. 'Commander Spock, these cells are just disintegrating completely. This Dr Alunan certainly knew what he was doing.'

Spock resisted reply in case the movement of his jaw also moved the rest of his head. But he considered Dr Alunan and his achievement. It was extremely regretful that the man had died, brought down by his own invention. His insight had been extraordinary, though, in creating a virus that was capable of targeting these particular rare and tenacious cells and causing them to break down sufficiently to become vulnerable to the disruptor treatment.

'I'm going to wash some saline over your eye, and I want you to blink, Commander,' the doctor said.

'Go ahead,' Spock replied. Although he did not feel the liquid touching his anaesthetised eye, he did feel the warm water trickling down his face and he blinked hard, seeing the light in the room coruscate and brighten and dim as he did. 'Fascinating,' he murmured.

The doctor came close again, dabbing a towel at his face to dry away the streaming saline.

'Let me give that eye a scan,' she said. There was the soft warble of a scanner, and she murmured, 'Commander Spock, this shows one hundred percent of the cells removed in that eye.'

Spock stiffened, blinking again and straining to make sense of what was before him. How could he be sighted in that eye and not be able to tell?

'I cannot see with any clarity,' he said in a calm voice. What he could see was light and a lot of shade and blurred edges.

'No, you won't be able to,' the doctor told him, putting a hand briefly on his shoulder. 'There's a certain amount of damage to the lens. That will either need to be repaired or you'll need the lens replacing. You'll also need to readjust to vision. You've been blind for quite a while now. It's not going to be a miracle of scales falling from the eyes.'

Spock acknowledged a certain amount of disappointment in his mind, and put it aside.

_Kaiidth._

He let that word settle through his mind. It was not often that he thought in Vulcan words while he was amongst humans, but there was no direct translation for _kaiidth. _What was, was, and if there was no miraculous restoration of his sight, so be it. He could do nothing but accept it. All would be resolved in the end.

'All right, I'm going to tackle your right eye now,' the doctor told him. 'Are you ready for me to begin?'

'Quite ready,' Spock said, beginning to nod but being reminded by the firm hold on his temples that his head was immobile.

The odd and uncomfortable feeling set up again in his right eye as the doctor focussed the beam on his pupil. Again he saw the odd distortions in light and shade, the movement of small black masses across his vision like the migration of far away creatures.

'Saline again, Commander,' the doctor said brightly, and he submitted to the warm douche of water that trickled down his face and into his collar. 'And blink.'

Again, he blinked hard, almost wincing as a light flashed near him.

'Sorry, that was bright, wasn't it?' the doctor asked. 'I want to have a proper look into both those eyes, though. The scan shows no cells in that right eye either. Technically, Commander Spock, you are no longer blind because of those opaque cells.'

Spock's heart leapt momentarily before he controlled the reaction. It felt like a small explosion inside him and he felt the instinctive twitch of the corners of his mouth before he clamped down on that so-human response. His hands gripped hard on the arms of the chair, though, and he felt the soft foam fabric they were made of suddenly give and tear under his fingers.

'I seem to have inadvertently damaged your chair. I apologise,' he said quickly, releasing the arms.

Dr Zhao laughed in response, a bright laugh that reminded Spock of Christine.

'Never mind,' she said. 'These chairs go through a lot of wear.'

That reminder of Christine had pushed away some of the joy that Spock was carefully holding inside himself and he asked, 'Am I free to go once you have performed this check?'

Dr Zhao laughed again, rather more softly. 'Not quite, Commander. You have residual damage to your eyes that won't be fixed by either a healing trance or even good old human wishing. And I know that Dr Badami isn't about to let you walk out of here until you're fit. We have to be sure you're no longer contagious.'

'And yet you are treating me and risking your own health,' Spock pointed out.

'One of the perils of the trade, I'm afraid, Commander,' she smiled. 'Believe me, I'm loaded with anti-viral agents and I'll be the first to turn myself in if anything develops. But if I hadn't worked on your eyes now, while the virus was still affecting those cells, the treatment might not have worked.'

'I appreciate your putting yourself in danger to treat me,' Spock said soberly.

The doctor put a hand on his shoulder, and he was assailed briefly by the warmth of her emotions.

'It's all part of the job,' she told him. 'Now, let me get my light again and I'll have a proper look at your eyes. I'll release the frame from around your head first, and you'll be a lot more comfortable.'

Spock waited while the pressure was released on the frame and the doctor swung it away from his head. Then she came close to him again and shone her light carefully into his eyes. He held himself back from flinching as a brightness struck the back of his eye the like of which he had not seen in a very long time. Colours moved amorphously around inside his eye, mostly tinted green from his blood, it seemed, and white from the light the doctor held. She was murmuring rather incoherent sentences as she bent near him, and he could hear the clicking of an instrument in her hand. Her tone of voice was positive, however, and Spock allowed that to increase his own optimism.

'Well, Commander,' she said at last, moving away from him and turning the main lights back on. Spock blinked, half dazzled and half amazed by the width and depth of the light before him. He could see blurred objects, and before them an unfocussed conglomeration of flesh colour and dark hair and vibrant orange clothing where the doctor was standing.

'What do you think?' she asked.

Spock stood up slowly, reaching out a hand before himself, uncertain of where all of this light and colour was placed in relation to himself.

'It is – fascinating,' he said.

'Tell me what you see, Commander,' she asked him. 'My instruments can only tell me what _they_ think you see.

'I see – ' Spock pondered. It had been a long time since he had needed to describe sight like this. 'I see colours. I see vague forms. I can see you, Dr Zhao, as an extremely blurred and rather shapeless mass. I see the colour of your hair and your skin and clothes, but not individual facial features. I see – '

He turned to the left, peering forward. Was that a window? He was sure that it was. He walked very tentatively towards it, wishing he had his cane, but he had left it behind in his room. This blurred world was deceptive.

The doctor came forward and put a hand on his arm. 'There's an instrument trolley there,' she told him, steering him a little to the right. 'And now you're clear.'

'This is the window,' Spock said in wonder, reaching it and lifting his hand to touch the cold glass. 'The sky is blue. There are no clouds.'

'The sky is blue,' she repeated in a tone of deep satisfaction. 'Yes, it's the first clear day we've had in a week. The sky is definitely blue.'


	16. Chapter 15

At last this peculiar kind of captivity was over. After another twenty-four hours Dr Badami assured him that he was no longer infectious and Spock was allowed to sign himself out of the hospital's care. He gathered his few belongings together and harnessed Sacha, and left the room with his hand loosely touching a nurse's arm. It was odd navigating through this new type of visual impairment. It showed him so much more than he had seen since first becoming blind, but it was also deceptive and confusing.

'Would you like me to take you to main reception and order a cab?' the nurse asked him.

Spock shook his head. 'I would like you to take me to the labs,' he said. 'I intend to offer my help to those researching a treatment for this virus.'

'Oh, well I can't be sure they'll let you in, Commander,'the nurse said doubtfully. 'But I can take you down there. Those poor people need someone to work out a cure. We have a ninety-five year old who – '

Spock stiffened. 'A ninety-five year old?' he cut across her. His grandmother was ninety-five, and the probability that she was this patient seemed too high to discount. 'Is the patient called Mrs Grayson?'

The nurse hesitated then said, 'Yes, that's her name. Do you know her, Commander?'

Spock's lips thinned. 'She is my grandmother. I fail to understand why I was not told of this. What is her condition?'

'Well, no one knew...' the nurse faltered, pausing in her step in the middle of the corridor. 'Her husband's been visiting but perhaps he didn't want you to know while you were ill. I think he's here now, in fact, not that there's much to be gained from being there. She's unresponsive.'

Spock considered the urgency of going down to the labs and measured it against what he might gain from visiting his grandmother. Perhaps if he were strictly following a logical course of action he would accept that there was little use in his being at her bedside, but there was also the fact that there was already a competent team of people working at a solution, and there was a very real possibility that if he didn't go to his grandmother now he may be too late.

'Please take me to her room,' he said in a level tone.

'Of course, Commander,' the nurse said immediately. 'It's just a little way down the corridor.'

He sensed his grandfather first as they entered the room. He could see him too, an indistinct dark mass near the window, making the light flicker as he moved.

'Grandfather?' he asked.

'Oh – Spock,' the man said in a rather distracted and confused tone. 'Spock, come on in. Nurse, can you check – '

'I checked her just fifteen minutes ago, Mr Grayson,' the nurse said patiently, 'and she's connected to the central monitoring system. If there's any change at all the nursing desk will be notified immediately. Now, Commander Spock, if you're all right I need to be going about my duties.'

'I am quite fine,' Spock nodded.

The nurse left and Spock took a step forward, extending his cane with care and trying to move closer to his grandmother's bed.

'Grandmother is unconscious?' he asked.

His grandfather cleared his throat then said, 'Yes, yes, she's still asleep.'

'May I ask why you did not tell me that she was ill?' Spock asked curiously.

There was a long silence. Spock could hear his grandfather breathing. There was a slight hitch in his breath that spoke of pulmonary difficulty. Not far in front of him he was aware of the softer, slower breathing of his grandmother.

'Son, I've been here for thirty-six hours straight,' his grandfather said abruptly, moving away from the window and coming across the room. 'Sit down, Spock,' he said. 'There's – er, there's a seat just there by grannie's bed. Just in front of you.'

Spock stepped cautiously forward, aware that his grandfather felt a great reluctance to actually touch and guide him. But he found the seat without issue, and sat down. His grandfather scraped a chair across the floor and sat down too.

'I've been here thirty-six hours,' he said again, 'not knowing if she'd live or die. Age we are we're ready to die anyway, we thought – but not yet. I don't want her to go yet...'

The silence came and broadened and Spock murmured, 'Understandable.'

'Didn't know if you were going to make it either,' the man continued. 'They told me you were pretty bad. You couldn't have come to see her in that state, and she wouldn't know you were there. So I stayed with her, and I let you do what you needed to do.'

'And if she had died?' Spock asked softly.

'Well then,' he said, as if he did not want to say anything further. 'She hasn't, yet.'

'No,' Spock said.

He reached out a hand to the bed and felt soft blankets. His grandfather stood and, in an unprecedented move, took hold of Spock's hand and moved it to his grandmother's. Spock closed his fingers around her frail, still ones, still feeling the touch of his grandfather lingering on his skin. Through the contact he had felt the old man's helplessness and fear, buried beneath a leather-like skin in his mind. The man stood there next to him, very close but not touching, and Spock suddenly wished that he knew more about him, that he would speak more and share more and let him into his life.

His grandmother's fingers were unmoving in his but he could feel her pulse as blood moved about her body. She was warm for a human and there was a trace of sweat on her fingers. He could feel the confused and unfiltered emotions of a dream in her mind. Tentatively he reached out, wary of intrusion but wanting to give some measure of comfort. He did not reach far enough for her to be aware of his presence, but carefully he calmed the racing feelings in her mind and felt her breath and pulse slow.

'Maybe she knows you're here,' his grandfather said, breaking into his concentration. 'She's quieter now.'

Spock blinked and brought himself back to reality. 'Yes, maybe she does,' he said, choosing not to let his grandfather know that he had touched her mind. He did not believe he would appreciate it.

'Are you going to be visiting your partner, Spock?' his grandfather asked. 'You do know she's here too, don't you?'

'Yes, I do know that,' Spock said, allowing his thoughts to reach out for a moment to try to sense Christine. 'I have visited her since being allowed to leave my room. She is doing as well as can be expected.'

Silence fell again. Spock sat and listened to the soft sounds of the medical equipment in the room, to the noises of breathing and the very quiet sounds of digestion and beating hearts, sounds that would pass a human by. Outside the room there were many small noises of hospital life, and an occasional flurry of activity. He became aware that he was focusing on those noises, waiting for anything that might be a sign of trouble in Christine's room, which he believed was just across the corridor.

'Grandfather, I am sorry,' he said abruptly.

'Eh?' the man asked, starting as if he had been dropping off to sleep.

'I am sorry,' Spock repeated. 'It was I who introduced this virus to grandmother, and to Christine and the two others who are ill. It was developed in order to treat _my_ blindness. I am sorry for what has happened.'

His grandfather was silent, and then Spock felt a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. 'It's not your fault, son. I've been talking to the doctors a lot about this. They told me how that scientist infected you without you knowing. It's not your fault.'

Spock nodded slowly. It was true that it was not his fault, but he still could not deny the feeling of deep responsibility for the fact that Christine and his grandmother were both lying ill in hospital with the very real possibility that they would die.

'The other two people who are ill – are they family members too?' he asked.

'One of them is your grandmother's care worker,' his grandfather told him. 'Nice young woman. She comes in every other day. The other one is your aunt Stephanie, and it's the first time in her life I've known her to stop talking.'

Spock quirked his eyebrow at that. His grandfather must have seen him do it because he said in a confidential tone, 'It's humour that keeps the fear away, son. You should try it. That's my wife and my daughter-in-law lying there.'

'Yes, of course,' Spock murmured. He stiffened his spine, then felt for Sacha's harness. 'Grandfather, I must go,' he said. 'I can be of use in the lab.'

'Well, you go then,' his grandfather said, patting a hand onto his shoulder. 'I've no doubt you'll be of use.'

''''''''''''

It did not take Spock long to return briefly to his and Christine's small apartment, gather together the equipment he needed for working alongside sighted people, and return to the hospital. He was taken to the lab by a nurse and shown in through the door and introduced to a lab technician called Laura Howarth.

'Laura, this is Commander Spock,' the nurse told him. 'He thinks he might be able to help.'

'Oh!' the woman replied, sounding surprised. 'Commander I didn't realise you were better. Looks like this virus is less virulent in Vulcans than in humans, then.'

'That would seem to be the case,' Spock nodded. 'Ms Howarth, may I speak to your lead researcher?'

'That would be Dr Rowlands,' she said. 'She's just in the next room. Let me take you through.'

'Thanks you,' Spock said, taking the offered arm. He followed the woman through into a rather smaller room that was so brightly lit that he found himself blinking.

'Janet,' the technician called, and someone turned from what looked like a lab bench.

'Oh, Commander Spock,' the woman said without waiting for introductions. 'Mr Spock I'm so glad to see you on your feet. I visited you when you were ill – you had no idea of course – but I needed some blood samples.'

'I was hoping that I could help,' Spock told her. 'I have brought my computer and other equipment and you will find me quite used to lab work.'

'Oh, well we'd love to have you,' the doctor told him warmly. 'Of course.'

'I warn you I am adjusting to a recent change in my vision,' Spock said. 'The virus had its designed effect and allowed an ophthalmologist to remove the opaque cells from my eyes, but I am still suffering lens damage.'

'Well, I can imagine that must be hard to adjust to,' the doctor nodded. 'Getting used to a flood of information, eh?'

'Essentially,' Spock nodded.

'Well, I'll tell you what. Why do you get your computer opened up and I'll transfer all of my data so far, and you can see what you make of it? I'm very glad to have a scientist of your eminence working on this, and I really hope you'll be able to see something I can't.'

'I shall certainly do my best,' Spock assured her.

He sat down at the chair she showed him to and opened up his computer. Once he was immersed in the data his awareness the room seemed to fade away and he was only conscious of the writing under his fingers and the verbal descriptions in his earpiece. There had to be something in the data that would suggest something to him that had not been noticed by the human scientists at work here.

Looking over the symptoms of the illness was especially difficult. They read as any medical textbook would, but he knew that the patients being described included Christine and his grandmother. They appeared to slip between sleep and unconsciousness, and the breakdown of cell membranes in their bodies was causing problems including internal bleeding and oedema caused by organ failure. It was obvious to him that his grandmother, at least, would not be able to stand the stress much longer.

He found a sentence regarding the patients' ability to fight the virus, and reread it. It seemed that most of the treatment being applied was a palliative only. It was suggested that the best remedy was for the patients' immune systems to fight the disease themselves.

'Dr Rowlands?' he asked, turning away from the computer and trying to see where she was in the room. This increase in sight was making him rely less on his other senses. He would have to correct that until he actually had viable vision.

'Yes, Commander?' she asked from across the room.

'Doctor, I would suggest taking a sample and full readings from my body,' he said. 'Since I am half human the defences that my body manifested against the virus may be useful in synthesising a treatment for human patients.'

'Yes, of course!' the woman said, hurrying across to him. 'I don't know why it didn't occur to me!'

'I am usually viewed as Vulcan, when I am in fact possessed of fifty percent human genetics,' Spock said. 'The Vulcan genome is dominant, but I am still affected by those human genetics. It won't be an easy process, but I do believe that this is the key.'


	17. Chapter 16

Spock had been awake for thirty-two hours. His spine felt like a stack of beads held rigidly on a wire. His forehead was tight with a headache that he was trying to deny. Had he been fully fit he would have barely felt the effects of such a long period awake, but even he had to admit that he was not fully fit at the moment. But he felt he had little choice. While the humans in the lab came and went around him, he alone had the stamina to stay at the desk, checking readings, researching, and continuing tests that needed twenty-four hour surveillance.

'Commander, that's enough,' someone said from behind him in a firm voice.

He jolted upright. He had not realised that he had relaxed his position so far. He was positive he had not fallen asleep, but he was not fully alert.

'Dr Rowlands?' he asked, momentarily uncertain of who it was standing behind him. The lab seemed empty apart from himself and this other person.

'Yes, it's Dr Rowlands,' she assured him. She put a hand on his shoulder and he straightened up further until she removed the touch. 'Commander Spock, I thought you'd been out of here to sleep, but I've been told that no one's seen you leave. You must have been here for a full day at the least.'

'I have been in the lab for twenty-five point seven three hours,' Spock informed her, 'and we still have not found a solution to the virus.'

'Well, it's enough,' she told him firmly. 'You can't have eaten, and I'm sure you haven't slept. Go take a break. I don't want to see you back in here for a good few hours.'

Spock breathed out slowly, preparing to remonstrate.

'I can have security escort you out,' the woman told him in a threatening voice, reminding him that his rank meant very little here. He was only in the lab due to the grace of the hospital staff.

'Very well,' he said. If obeying Dr Rowlands was the only means of continuing his research later, he would have to do so. 'I shall go and have a meal.'

'And a sleep,' the doctor insisted.

Spock raised an eyebrow but did not respond. If Dr Rowlands was going to insist on a sleep he was certain he could find somewhere to rest and meditate on the problem he was trying to solve instead of wasting time unconscious. She would be none the wiser.

He called the ever patient Sacha to his side and said, 'Could you tell me how to find the canteen?'

'I'll take you there,' she said firmly. 'The lab will survive for a few minutes alone. And I will get you a meal. That way I might be sure you'll actually eat it.'

When he stood his legs felt stiff and awkward, and he stayed still for a moment regaining his balance. He was not used to such frailties as this. Then he picked up his cane and his data padd and followed Dr Rowlands out of the room.

'''''''''''''''''

In the canteen Spock sat and steadily picked pieces of lettuce out of his salad with his fork and put them steadily into his mouth. He was chewing and swallowing but he could not say that he was particularly noticing what he was eating. Instead he was concentrating on continuing his review of the data gathered so far and eating the meal only because it was there and he had promised Dr Rowlands that he would do so.

He was certain that there was something in the structure of the antibodies in his own blood which would translate to a viable treatment for the human patients. While he had been working over the past day another five people had presented with symptoms of the virus, and similar reports had come in from London, where Dr Alunan had died, some of the victims being staff at his lab and some hospital workers who treated him. Without a treatment this disease had the potential to become an epidemic, even with its slow rate of spread.

He touched his finger to the screen, bringing up another page of data and running his fingertips over it to refresh the figures in his mind. There was something there. He was certain that if he could only find the vital piece of datum amongst all of the other readings that he would find the solution. He was so very close to finding it. If McCoy were to accuse him of using intuition he would steadily deny the claim, but he had to admit that he was looking for something that _felt_ right. Everything else in this chain of numbers felt wrong. He was search for the right bit, and this bit under his fingertip felt as if it were right.

He extracted that phrase and copied it to a blank page and began to concentrate in depth on what was before him. If he could only –

'Oh, so there you are.'

Spock jerked his head up at the words.

'Billy?' he asked, aware of someone standing very close to the table.

'Don't _Billy_ me,' the man replied in a hard voice. 'For god's sake, Spock, grandma's lying there almost in a coma, and the same goes for my wife and your girlfriend and half a dozen other people, and you're sitting in the canteen eating salad?'

Spock hesitated, trying to understand the motivation for the man's aggressive tone. 'Billy, I do not understand your – ' he began.

'I've been to your apartment, I've been everywhere looking for you. Where the hell have you been?' the man continued to berate him. 'You've not been visiting with them – I know that much. This virus is _your_ fault. So what in hell – '

Spock put his fork down and carefully put his data padd in sleep mode.

'Why were you looking for me?' he asked in a level tone.

'For god's sake, you unfeeling, unemotional bastard,' Billy hissed. 'Haven't you got any idea why I might think you should be up there with your grandma, your girlfriend? Even I put more value on Chrissie than that and I haven't seen her since high school.'

Spock got to his feet, and was gratified to hear Sacha stand too.

'What purpose would be achieved from sitting at the bedside of an unconscious patient?' he asked flatly.

Without warning a fist struck Spock in the jaw, hard. He stumbled backward, putting up a hand in a reflex action and grabbing hold of Billy's wrist. If he had been a human he would have been sitting on the floor in a daze after the blow. As it was he suppressed the pain in his jaw and steadied himself.

There was a commotion in the room around him at what had happened, people moving in to the scene of the short-lived fight, grasping Billy and pulling him back. Other hands took hold of Spock's shoulders and there was a volley of concerned enquires as to his health.

'I am quite all right,' he said, stiffening away from the hands that held him. 'Thank you. I am quite all right.'

He could hear Billy struggling and grunting as if trying to free himself from the people who held him and he said, 'Please, release my cousin.'

Other murmurs, a woman saying in a surprised tone louder than the rest, 'His cousin?'

'Please,' Spock said again. 'Let him go. Billy, I would be grateful if you would sit down and speak with me.'

'I think the time for speaking's gone, isn't it?' Billy growled. 'Why don't you try getting up there and – '

A voice over the PA system stopped them both. 'Relatives of Mrs Grayson, please make their way to her room. Relatives of Mrs Grayson, please make their way to her room.'

Spock stiffened, a thousand possibilities moving through his mind, most being dismissed. The most likely eventuality was that her condition had worsened.

'Guide me,' he said to Billy.

His cousin took hold of his arm in a rough grip. He did not hesitate to help but Spock could feel his uncontrolled emotions spilling through the touch. He carefully rearranged so that he was holding the man's arm then followed him from the room, Sacha following behind.

Spock took the time as they walked to the elevator to say in a level tone, 'I have not being visiting with either Christine or grandmother because I have been fully occupied in the hospital laboratories trying to formulate a remedy for this illness.'

Billy was silent, but through the touch Spock felt his emotions lessen somewhat, changing from outright unreasoning anger to a grudging guilt.

'All right,' he said eventually. 'All right, Spock. Are – are you close?'

'We are doing our best,' Spock said. 'I believe that given a little more time we will be successful.'

'Well,' Billy said, seeming unable to think of more words to say than that.

The elevator doors slipped open and Spock followed his cousin out into the corridor. Together they walked swiftly to their grandmother's room, where a doctor was talking gravely with Mr Grayson.

'Spock, Billy,' Mr Grayson said as he saw them. 'Come over here, boys. Your grandma's taken a turn. I asked them to call you.'

Spock followed Billy's arm and then stood and listened without speaking as the doctor continued to explain that he had been forced to place Mrs Grayson on more invasive life support in order to help her failing organs.

'But the cell damage is throughout her system,' the doctor continued. 'There is only so much we can do through external means. The rest is up to her.'

'Up to her!' Billy began in an agitated tone, and Mr Grayson shushed him.

'Am I to understand that there is nothing more you can do medically but alleviate the symptoms?' Spock asked.

'That's about it,' the doctor nodded. Spock watched him, another part of his mind rather fascinated that he could see the form of the man before him, see when he was nodding or shaking his head, even if he could not make out enough to function as a sighted person. The room was a blurred impressionist painting of shapes and colours, all overlaid with the usual scents and sounds of a hospital room. Spock was very aware of the rough sound of his grandmother's laboured breathing. One part of his mind was still ruminating on the problem he was working on in the lab, but a much more conscious part was formulating and analysing possible ways to help his grandmother in the immediate.

'Doctor, a word, if you will,' he said.

'Yes, of course,' the man nodded.

Spock hesitated a moment. He would rather speak privately, away from his cousin and grandfather, but he knew that any suggestion of that would spark protests.

'Doctor, are you aware of Vulcan self-healing methods?' he asked.

'Aware of them, yes,' the doctor replied in an intrigued tone. 'I can't say that xenobiology is my speciality, though.'

'Are you also aware of the rudiments of the Vulcan mind meld?' Spock asked.

'Again, I know something of it,' the doctor told him. 'But really I'm just a good old human New England doctor. I'm not an expert on these things.'

Spock was momentarily reminded of McCoy, but he put that aside.

'There is a possibility that I could help my grandmother to fight harder against this illness through a mind meld,' he said in a level tone, aware of the prickling response of his human relatives.

'Now hang on,' Billy began, still with the residue of anger roughening his voice.

Mr Grayson cut across him, asking, 'Spock would that be safe?'

Spock pressed his lips together briefly. 'The meld can cause pressure changes in the blood vessels,' he said. 'There would be a risk that those pressure changes could be dangerous in an already failing system. But – '

'But without any help she might not make it through the next few hours,' the doctor cut over him in a sober tone. 'I know enough about these things to know that it's a viable idea, Mr Spock. But as her next of kin Mr Grayson would have to make the decision.'

Spock turned towards his grandfather, one eyebrow raised in expectation.

'Oh – Spock,' he murmured. He turned away and moved towards the window. Spock stood and waited and after a moment Mr Grayson said, 'We're not like you, Spock. We don't have that Vulcan – that – well, whatever it is that makes you so darn sharp, so fast. I can't make a decision like this with a snap of my fingers.'

Spock took a step forward. 'I understand that, grandpa,' he said in a low voice. 'You are aware that I am half human. But in this case there may be little choice.'

'Your grandson is right, Mr Grayson,' the doctor said soberly. 'We do have very little time.'

Spock could feel the rigidity in his grandfather even if he couldn't see it. His emotions emanated into the room in a cloud and seemed to wash over Spock's skin. It was almost overwhelming to feel such a pervasive miasma of fear and love and hope and indecision. He shut down his mental shields, knowing that his awareness of his surroundings would drop but also that he must do this if he wanted to be prepared for the meld. While he waited he devoted his higher processes to thinking through the problem of the virus remedy again, seeing the string of data in his mind and working it around until it began to make more and more sense.

'All right, Spock,' his grandfather said eventuality.

Spock snapped out of his cogitation, putting all his attention back to the humans in the room.

'All right,' his grandfather said again. 'If it's the only thing we can do. I can't say I know much about this – this meld process, but Amanda's told us it's a wonderful, loving thing.'

'It can be,' Spock nodded, his voice low. He did not want to ruminate on the melding experience that his parents had shared in the course of their lives. 'In this case I would attempt to focus on the task at hand, but it would necessitate the sharing of some thoughts.'

'All right, Spock,' his grandfather nodded again. 'Do the meld. God knows there isn't anything else that we can do.'


	18. Chapter 17

Before Spock prepared himself for the meld he carefully transmitted all of his latest findings to Dr Rowlands in the lab, flagging his newest deductions as 'important' and explaining to her what he was about to do. She would probably be annoyed, in her human way, that he was not about to sleep, but he could do nothing about that. The best that he could hope for was that she would continue his research while he was attending to his grandmother, and perhaps come to some kind of efficacious conclusion.

'Is there anything you need, Mr Spock, to help you perform this procedure?' his grandmother's doctor asked him in a low voice once he had set the padd down and told him he was ready to begin.

'Nothing but a chair at the head of the bed,' he said. 'But it is important that you monitor her blood pressure and other readings.'

'So I pull you away if she gets – '

'No,' Spock said quickly. 'In her condition it's imperative that you do not sever the meld abruptly. If the situation becomes dangerous for her, touch my shoulder and speak to me. If you touch me I will hear you, then I shall withdraw safely from the meld.'

'Very well,' the doctor said.

Spock recognised that doubtful tone. He had heard it from many human, or at least non-Vulcan, doctors in the face of this process that they understood so poorly. But he should be able to trust the man, at least, to monitor his human grandmother successfully.

'Here you are, son,' his grandfather said, touching his arm lightly with uncertain fingers. 'There's a chair by the bed like you want.'

'Thank you,' Spock said.

He felt the fingers on his arm and allowed himself a moment of human regret again for the distance that there was between himself and his human grandfather. He did not know how to breach that gap, and was confident that it would be there until the man died. But he could not allow himself to dwell on that thought. His grandmother was the important one at this point in time. His grandfather took him to the chair and then let go of his arm, and the momentary contact was ended.

The seat by his grandmother's bed was comfortable, but Spock did not notice how hard or soft it was. His grandfather and the doctor were murmuring in the background, but he did not notice that either, or the presence of Billy just a few yards away. He closed his mind to all of those things, letting his mind release all of his current thoughts so that he could concentrate only on the meld.

He could hear his grandmother's breathing very close to him. Through blurred vision he could make out the flesh colour and grey-white hair against the pillow. He reached out a hand to that blurred shape and touched hair that was thin as cobweb, skin that was dry and papered with age. He touched his fingers to the meld positions with great care. He could feel the blood pulsing beneath her skin and the rhythm of her breathing that was kept artificially steady by a machine. Her skin felt cool, the bone of her skull hard beneath.

He closed his mind a further level until he ceased to see the blurred colours around him. He saw nothing at all, although his eyes were open. There was nothing but the touch of his fingers on her skin, her blood, her breath. He let himself sink, catching on to the tendrils of her mind, trying to find that place where her consciousness resided.

She was dreaming. He caught glimpses that were clear and sharp, unlike his damaged sight. She was in a house that bore some resemblance to her own, and grandpa was there, younger and wearing clothes of a different era. She herself was younger and filled with a kind of fury at something that Spock could not discern.

He took hold of that fury. She would need this determination. He recognised something of his mother in it. He saw in his own mind his mother's mouth set straight and firm, the many times that she had disagreed with Sarek and stuck to her own opinion until her husband had come around. Grandma was so like that. She was so like his mother.

That was enough. He could not allow himself to become distracted. He refocussed himself on his grandmother, taking hold of her thoughts and gently introducing his presence to her. He could not predict how she would react. Some people were very accepting of melds. Others fought, even if they had given consent.

There was an initial jerk as she realised that Spock was there in her mind. He felt shock, and an anger that spilt over from the fury in her dream. She pushed at him, and he stayed still and firm, probing no further, but simply allowing her to understand that he was here and he would not move.

A sense of shame, of folding down. She was trying to close away her most private thoughts to him. Her mind flitted between thoughts like a bird. Everything that she was trying to hide was pulled to the fore in her attempt to identify it and push it away. Spock turned himself away, trying to impress upon her that he was not here to intrude. He had to wait for her to calm so that he could properly impart his intent.

He was a child to her. He could feel that. She was aware of who he was and saw him as a child cracking open a bedroom door and looking in. He had caught her naked and unaware.

_Grandma, I am an adult man _ he tried to impress upon her.

Her thoughts were chaotic and hard to connect with. There was no chance of direct communication. Instead he tried to find those wholly unconscious parts of her mind which controlled her bodily responses. He mirrored himself alongside her, seeking to strengthen her awareness of those responses, to convince her body to set itself wholly to healing. She was wasting energy on these chaotic and confused dream thoughts. There was no discipline to a human mind. He could not fathom how they ever got well from severe illness without the ability to focus. Perhaps the truth was that they did not. Too many humans died from ailments from which Vulcans would recover.

There. He was alongside those deep and buried places that governed the very cells of the body. She was not aware that they existed. He brought them slowly into her consciousness and a kind of startlement rippled through her mind. Her thoughts were veering again, focusing on the strangeness of this revelation rather than on the ability to heal itself.

He stayed rigid, bringing her mind back to what was necessary. He stayed with her, guiding her, teaching her with great patience how to focus, how to direct every cell to hold on, to heal. She could not do it alone. He knew that. Once he was gone from her mind she would lose the ability to even be aware of those parts of herself, even if she retained some of the technique. He was tired and this tired him further, but he had no choice. She felt like a flower plunged into liquid nitrogen. She was frail and ready to break. He had to stay and give her his strength.

''''''''''''

On the outside the humans in the room watched with fascination and doubt intermingled in equal measure. The doctor flicked his eyes to and from the readings above the bed and wondered if he had been right to let the Vulcan even begin this process. He could see no change in the old woman's readings apart from a slight elevation in blood pressure. He would have to watch that. It was not pushing into the red yet, but he couldn't count on it. This was a totally unknown process to him. If he'd had more time he would have gone away and sat down at his terminal and researched what he could. As it was he had not had the time.

Spock's grandfather sat on the other side of the bed to his grandson, watching both of them intently. His wife's face was pale and her skin was like old tissue, but he could see in the lines of her nose and brows the woman that she used to be. Often he looked at her and barely saw the age that had settled on her. She was the woman that he had courted and married. He looked through the skin and bone and saw what she was beneath. But when she was sleeping, or now, unconscious, he saw the frame, the thing that held her. She was old, unbelievably so. They both were. He could hardly believe it. When he closed his eyes he was twenty, thirty maybe. She was she same age. But the thing that held her was so old that he was terrified that it would break. It was a fear he had to hold inside. He could not let Billy see it, or this young doctor.

He wondered if Spock knew. He had never really found out just how much these Vulcans sensed with their telepathic minds. He hadn't wanted to. If Spock knew how scared he was, would he care? He saw Spock as he had been thirty years ago, a small, upright boy, intense and unapproachable and so damnably repressed. He hadn't been able to play ball with him like he had with his other grandchildren. He hadn't been able to induce him to run on the beach or laugh at the waves. It was as if he was plated off behind a glass wall. He was always focussed on something that should have been the concern of much older minds. Not the waves but the pattern and frequency of them. Not the sand but the microscopic make up of each grain. He wondered if Spock had ever been able to sit on the beach and just accept the beauty of it. He wished that in some way he could connect, but perhaps he never would. He was old, just as old as his wife. It was too late now.

He jerked his eyes back into focus. He had drifted away and had been staring at nothing. Nothing seemed to have changed. Spock was still sitting there with his hand on her face, his eyes glazed. He didn't understand the readings up above the bed and didn't want to try. He depended on the doctor to do that. She looked just as still and sick as ever, her breathing coming slow and shallow between her lips, the machines softly bleeping around her. She did not seem worse, at least. Thank god she did not seem worse.

Billy found himself pacing. He didn't know what to think. It seemed useless to stay here but he didn't feel right leaving. He felt bad for all the things he had said to Spock, even if he had felt them at the time. He didn't understand Vulcans and he felt he should, since he was related to one. He had always tried to get along with Spock but it had just never quite worked. He had always felt as if he were slipping past him, missing the mark, not making the connection. And now Spock was involved in this – whatever it was. He didn't want to call it mumbo-jumbo. His mind instinctively called it that but he knew that was not true. He was scared of it. He could admit that to himself. He was scared of any process where a man could read another person's mind. His thoughts were his own. The idea of someone else getting into his head made him feel dirty.

He had to stop himself thinking like that. No matter how angry he had been at Spock, Spock was doing his best to help grandma. He couldn't fault him for that. It must be hard for him. He knew it had been hard for him going blind like that. He couldn't imagine. And he knew how private Vulcans kept themselves. What was it like for Spock peeling back the layers and letting his own thoughts into another person's mind? If this worked he would have to do something. He would have to say something. Apologise, make it better. If this worked. If it didn't work – well...

He couldn't take it any longer. Abruptly his pacing took him to the door and he found himself out in the corridor, standing between the doors to his grandmother's room, Chrissie Chapel's room, his wife's room. It all seemed deathly quiet. It all felt like too much. He was pulled in too many different ways. He walked briefly to Chrissie's door and looked in through the small glass window. She was lying unconscious. She looked hot and fevered. He put his hand on the door but let it slip. His wife was in the room across the corridor. He stood there looking through the window. It was the same little rectangular window as into Chrissie's room, but it showed him a completely different person. Her hair was dark and messy on the pillow. It needed brushing. His heart beat fast as he remember how he first bumped into Spock and Chrissie in the snow and had felt an upsurging of those feelings he had always felt for Chrissie. It was a childhood crush. He had been with Lisa for so long he had forgotten how special she was. She meant so much more to him than Chrissie. His anger at Spock suddenly felt like jealous idiocy. He would go in to Lisa and brush her hair and make her comfortable and bend his head down and pray that the research Spock had been doing worked.


	19. Chapter 18

Spock was drifting through deep, unconscious realms. It felt dark in here. This was a place his grandmother barely knew existed. In a Vulcan it would be quiet, regulated, a place of calm. In a Vulcan he would seem to be walking in a temple of thought, every spanning arch placed for a purpose. If he based his thoughts around human frames of reference he would see a cathedral. He did base his thoughts somewhat around human frames of reference. Human and Vulcan jostled. He thought of the places where they kept the Katric Arks. He thought of temples of communal meditation. He thought of Winchester Cathedral, and his mother walking down the centre between the seats, awed.

He was losing focus. He was tired. He brought himself back, opened his mind to his grandmother's unconscious places. In a human, in _this_ human, he felt he was grasping through a forest of indistinct growth, spans like branches arcing over, intermeshed, the light a dim blood-red. She had no idea that this place was here. He was guiding her to the depths of her own jungle, pointing out each line, making sense of the confusion. She was startled and amazed. She ceased to be lost. The tangled arching lines grew distinct and incredible and he felt her awe. She had never known this place was here. She wanted to explore further, to find her way to the very centre. She began to understand.

Somewhere deep in his grandmother's mind something changed. Spock felt it click over like a switch being flicked. He felt her breathing become stronger, more purposeful. He felt the understanding ripple through her of how to fight this sickness that was weakening every cell of her body.

Influenced as he was by her mind, he could have laughed. He was tired and wanted to collapse, but he could have laughed. The lingering dream that was playing in her mind changed, and he saw himself standing there inside it. She was walking into a room and her family was there. A party had been planned. There was laugher everywhere, and Spock found himself joining in. He opened his arms and received his grandmother in a hug, enclosing her so tightly that he could feel the fragility of her body. She felt like a bird to him, ready to break.

'Don't worry, Spock. You won't break me in here,' she said, and her voice sounded younger than it had in a long time. 'I'm stronger than I've been in years.'

He moved closer to her, and smiled. The smile was natural to him. To her it was like the sun coming out and he felt her joy blossom and spread and seem to fill the room.

'Why, Spock, I didn't know you could,' she said.

'I am able to feel joy too,' he said. No one else in the room noticed them standing there or were listening to their words. 'I simply process and manage my emotions. Humans do not.'

'Humans do,' she admonished him gently. 'Not to the degree that Vulcans do, but you do us a disservice.'

'Accepted,' Spock said, taking her hand in his. Even her hand felt younger, plumper. Her skin had more colour than he expected. He looked at her and saw dark colour in her greyed hair. She was thirty years or more younger in her dream. She seemed to be growing younger at every moment.

'Well, if we can't be what we want in our dreams...' she said. 'Is this a lucid dream, Spocky? I've heard about those. Never had one.'

'It is something of the sort,' Spock nodded, not bothering to protest at her use of the diminutive. 'Because I am with you in meld, you have greater consciousness and control.'

'Oh, well, I could do anything!' she said, slipping her hand from his and spinning around, seeming younger still.

'You must focus on healing yourself,' Spock said soberly. She stopped moving. He noticed now that she was wearing a dress patterned with colours toward the red end of the spectrum. The skirt stayed billowed out for a moment before falling back against her legs. He had never seen his grandmother this young.

'Yes, I must,' she said soberly. 'But what about that girl of yours, Spock?' she asked.

Spock felt heat rise around them. He was silent. For once he did not know how to respond. But in the meld that didn't matter. His grandmother hugged him and kissed him on the shining crown of his hair.

'She's a good one, Spock,' she said. 'She reminds me of your mother. Go and see to her. I'll be fine here.'

Spock demurred, looking past the dream and into his grandmother's mind, trying to see how well she was managing to fight this illness.

'Go to her, Spock,' she said again. 'You should go to her. She needs you. You're worried, aren't you?'

'Of course I am – ' Spock began, but he broke off and carefully controlled his thoughts.

'Go to her,' his grandmother said again.

Spock watched her turn away. She walked deliberately in her red-hued dress to the other side of the room, her spine straight. She opened a cupboard. She took out a small pot and shook pills into her hand, then raised them to her mouth. She was going to make herself well.

He pulled away with great care, feeling like a ship leaving dock, suddenly unsteady on the sea. He felt blind again, muffled, cut off. He withdrew from her and opened his eyes onto the blur of damaged sight, gasping, feeling a hand on his shoulder. He was so tired he wanted to rest his head down on the mattress, but he fought the impulse. His hand was still on his grandmother's face. He still had a residual sense of her thoughts.

'Are you all right, son?' his grandfather asked. It was his grandfather's hand touching Spock's shoulder, not the doctor. He listened, and could hear one more person in the room. Billy must have left.

'Spock, are you all right, son?' his grandfather asked again, his hand tightening a little.

Spock drew in breath, nodding.

'Quite all right,' he murmured. He straightened up and repeated, 'I am quite all right.'

'Whatever you did, it helped her immensely,' the doctor said.

His footsteps made a heavy noise on the floor as he walked over to the Vulcan. Spock focussed on the sounds of the displays above his grandmother's bed, on the sound of her breathing and the feeling of her pulse under his fingers. It felt stronger, it was true. The sounds of the display were reassuring.

'Is she out of danger, Doctor?' he asked succinctly.

'It's too soon to say absolutely,' the doctor replied. 'But I think she's turned the corner.'

Spock exhaled slowly. He took a moment to control the relief that was surging inside him. He wanted to return straight to the hospital lab now that he had done what he could for his grandmother, but he was certain that Dr Rowlands would not let him in. Humans could be incredibly stubborn, even more so because they were so motivated by emotion. It would be best, then, to spend some time at Christine's side. He was unlikely to sleep, but he could surely return to the lab in an hour or so and imply to Dr Rowlands that he had slept. He had something else to do first, though.

He stood up and straightened his top. He had been working and caught up in concern for his grandmother for so long that he could barely remember what he was wearing, but evidently it was some straight-cut black suit, light and warm, if a little crumpled with wear. It did not matter. He didn't foresee having the chance to go and change his clothes any time soon.

'Doctor, could you have someone take me to a long-range communications station?' he asked.

'Of course,' the doctor said quickly, and then Spock's grandfather said in a voice uncertain with emotion, 'I'll take you there, Spock. I could do with stretching my legs.'

Spock raised an eyebrow. He had expected his grandfather to want to stay at his wife's side, but he could feel the waves of emotion in the man. Perhaps he wanted some time outside of this room to process his very human feelings.

'Thank you, grandpa,' he said, taking hold of his arm. Sacha skittered to her feet and he felt for her leash, taking it in his hand.

His grandfather walked down the corridor largely in silence, but Spock felt as if something had changed between them, as if a barrier had been broken down. Finally the old man said, 'Spock, I will never be more grateful than I am today.'

'I did what I must,' Spock said simply.

'Plenty of people don't, Spock,' his grandfather replied. 'Here's the communication station. Where do you want me to set up the call to?'

Spock felt out with his hand and touched the seat. He seated himself and told Sacha to lie down, and then said, 'I wish to contact my ship, the _Enterprise_. I can tell you the necessary codes.'

He sat patiently while his grandfather carefully inputted the codes, and then said, 'Thank you, grandpa. I will be fine now.'

When the image came on screen he blinked at what he saw, a small shard of joy rising in his chest. He could see something of the colour of Jim's hair. He could see that he was wearing his green uniform shirt, not his gold. He suspected from the muted tone of the lighting that the captain was in his quarters.

'Spock!' Jim said, the joy evident in his voice. 'Bones was just grumbling about your lack of communication. It's good to see your face!'

Spock's eyebrow quirked. 'It's necessary for the good doctor to have something to complain about. I am pleased to serve.'

'How are things going, Spock?' Kirk asked. 'You got to Earth safely, then?'

'Obviously,' Spock nodded.

'Spock, you look exhausted,' Kirk said suddenly, concern loading his voice. 'The comm says you're calling from the hospital. Is everything all right?'

Spock considered how to reply. 'I would not entirely phrase it as _all right,_' he told his captain.

'Go on,' Kirk said suspiciously. 'I might have known you'd get yourself into trouble. What's been going on?'

'It is a long story,' Spock warned him. 'But first, you might like to know that my sight is considerably improved.'

If Spock had been of a more fanciful bearing he would have said that he could telepathically sense Kirk's joy even through subspace. As it was, he assumed he was simply interpreting the cues of breathing and tone of voice, and perhaps the way Kirk seemed to lean forward in his chair.

'How _considerably improved_?' Kirk asked. 'You're not – You can't see me, can you?'

'I can see a great deal more of you than I could previously,' Spock told him. I can make out colour and form. The cells are gone, Jim. It is only residual scarring which is left behind. I am waiting for an opportunity to have the scarring repaired.'

'Wait till I tell Bones!' Kirk grinned. 'Spock, this was more than I'd hoped for. It really is. But – ' His tone of voice changed. 'What about the hospital, Spock? What's going on? Why didn't you call me earlier?'

Spock dismissed that with a shake of his head. 'I saw no reason to bother you. However, the situation has grown more grave,' Spock admitted. 'It seems that Dr Alunan, who devised the virus to treat my sight, was less than scrupulous. The virus was quite unsafe and he infected me without my permission.'

'He _infected_ you?' Kirk interjected. 'I hope he's – '

'He is dead,' Spock cut across him succinctly. 'The illness spread. Dr Alunan died in a London infirmary, but not before infecting some of his staff and hospital employees. In turn I have carried the infection to a number of people who are now in this hospital, among them Miss Chapel, my grandmother, and my cousin's wife.'

'Miss Chapel?' Kirk echoed, latching first onto that familiar name. 'Is she all right, Spock?'

'She is gravely ill,' Spock admitted. 'I am working on a treatment for the illness, along with other scientists in the lab here.'

'What about your grandmother? Your cousin's wife?'

'My grandmother was quite seriously ill,' Spock admitted. 'I have just attempted to help her implement certain healing disciplines via a meld, and the doctor believes she has improved. However, her chances are still – '

He faltered off, uncertain of quite how to voice his grandmother's frail condition. No matter that he had improved her chances. She was extremely elderly and extremely weak. There was no certainty that she would live.

There was a movement on the screen. Kirk seemed to be looking at something in his hand, which he then put down again with a quiet clack.

'We're not far out, Spock, and we've nothing on schedule until the run to the Altinar conference,' he said. 'We can be there in five hours at Warp 8.'

'Captain, there is really no need – ' Spock began.

Kirk waved away Spock's words with his hand. Spock saw the pink blur move back and forward across the screen.

'We've been due a little R&R on Earth for months, Spock, and had it put off over and over again. Now I have a concrete reason to take it. Our sickbay team has a particularly good record on virus control.'

'It is your decision, Captain,' Spock said. He had to assume that the captain would make decisions based on what was best for the crew rather than his friendship with Spock and his concern for a single crewmember, or members of Spock's family.

'You're damn right it is,' Kirk said firmly. 'I'll put some calls through to Command and Scheduling. Pending approval, we'll be there in six hours at most.'


	20. Chapter 19

Christine's room was quiet. There was no nurse in attendance. Everything was being monitored at a distance by the relevant staff, and so there was no one to see Spock sit down in the chair next to her bed and rest his head down onto his arms as if he were exhausted. Truthfully, he _was_ exhausted. He would not have admitted that to anyone who asked, but his illness and the exertion of the mind meld with his grandmother had taxed him to the limit. If he had been allowed to he would have brought discipline to bear and returned to the lab and carried on working there with only a minimal drop in efficiency, but since he was not, he could allow himself to break down a little.

So, he seated himself by the bed, heard Sacha slump on the floor with a grunt, and rested his head down beside Christine's arm on her mattress. She was quiet and settled. He could hear her breath passing slowly between her lips. But her temperature was elevated and her stillness disturbed him. She was too ill to be restless.

He sat very still for a few moments, listening intently to the noises of Christine's body and to the gentle blips and beeps of the monitoring devices. Perhaps after a while he would call a nurse to update him on her condition, but that could wait. He did not want to be seen at this moment. The meld with his grandmother had left him feeling raw and exposed. His emotions were close to the surface and he had to admit to himself that he was deeply worried about Christine. He had told Kirk that there was no need to come, but in truth he would be grateful of the assistance of the _Enterprise_ medical team to fight this virus, and he would be grateful of the support of his friend.

He moved his hand so that it was touching Christine's forehead. Her skin was hot and damp with sweat. Her skull curved, hard and solid under his hand. Under there was all that she was, all that made her _Christine_. He could have slipped into her mind but he was wary of disturbing her sleep and exposing his concern to her. In this tired state he did not want her to see his innermost thoughts. When he was more composed, and in the presence of a doctor, perhaps he could perform a similar meld to the one that he had just performed on his grandmother, but until then it was best that he leave her in the privacy of her unconsciousness.

He could feel her thoughts moving like creatures, dark and confused. He did not intrude. He just tried to project feelings of calm, feelings of safety. She became aware of his presence and her breathing slowed, her thoughts unwound a little. Her hand flexed, and, aware of the movement, he took it in his. Her fingers clenched around his, but she was still asleep.

He turned his head on its side and let the mattress pillow his cheek. He listened to her breathing, in and out, and the sound of it soothed the thoughts in his mind. Beneath his control there was a deep fear. He had to acknowledge that. It was a fear of losing Christine, a fear of the void that she would leave in his mind. He did not intend to let that happen. It was imperative that the cure was found, it was imperative that they halted this illness before anyone else succumbed.

But he was so tired. His bones ached. His head was heavy. His own breathing mirrored Christine's, in and out, in and out. Dr Rowlands would not let him back into the lab. He had passed on his most recent thoughts and findings. He could rest for a while.

The image of the virus drifted in his mind, a spiky ball, an alien. Christine breathed, in and out, in and out...

'''''''''''''''''''''''

He woke, startled and momentarily confused. He was lying flat out with what felt like a blanket over him. He moved his hand and felt a soft, large weave to the cloth. He blinked, turning his head about, trying to orient himself. It was always confusing waking in a strange place.

What had happened? He had been with Christine, sitting by her bed, his head down on the mattress. He had been so tired. Now he felt astonishingly refreshed, but he was briefly annoyed at himself for succumbing to the need to sleep. The light was dim. For how long had he been unconscious?

He lay still, wanting to assess his surroundings before he made a move. He could still hear Christine's breath, in and out. He could hear the soft, musical chirping of the monitors above her bed. Evidently he was still in her room. He moved his hand over the bed he was lying on and discovered that it was narrow, with raised sides and a relatively hard mattress. So he had been manoeuvred onto a gurney. He would have questioned how he had been manhandled from the chair onto this bed without being woken up, but there was a distinctive metallic taste in the back of his mouth that usually came from one of McCoy's favoured sedatives. No doubt on finding him asleep one of the medical staff had decided to ensure he stayed that way, and injected him with something. Really, some medical professionals were completely unscrupulous.

He sat up cautiously, pushing the blanket back from his chest, running his hands over the cool rail at the side of the gurney, and then over his clothes. He was still dressed as he had been before, but his shoes had been removed. He pushed the blanket from his legs and tried to lower the bed rail. He could not work out how it functioned, so instead he manoeuvred himself over it, assuming that the floor was the expected distance below the level of the bed. His feet touched the floor just where he had thought it would be. It was cool and smooth through his socks, and somewhat slippery.

He stood and looked around, trying to make out the lie of the room. What had previous been a bright square where the window was was now dark. Christine's bed was there before him, bright with an orange covering, and he thought he could make out the shape of her head on the pillow. The room was quiet, but the instruments still beeped steadily. He could make out dim flashing of lights up above her head where the instrument panel was.

'Sacha?' he murmured.

The dog started up from a corner of the room and padded over to him, and he ruffled the fur on her head.

He did not know where his cane was. That was a frustration, but he put it aside and moved over to Christine's bed. The chair was still there, and he sat down in it and reached his hand to her shoulder.

She turned her head and said in a tired voice, 'Oh, Spock.'

The elation leapt in him and reached the muscles of his face. He was smiling, and she saw it and laughed weakly.

'You know, the last time I saw you do that...' she murmured.

Spock remembered. They had just returned from Vulcan. He had been exhausted, his hands dry and dusty with Vulcan dirt, his muscles aching, his mind in turmoil. He had been rejected by his bondmate. He had killed Captain Kirk. And there Jim had been in front of him, alive, whole, golden and real. And the smile had burst out of him before he could control it. His father, who had not been on-world to attend the ceremony, would have been severely disapproving of his son's conduct and his son's reaction.

But it had not mattered. All that mattered then was that Jim was alive. He had barely even been conscious of Christine standing there and witnessing that terrible display.

And now... Now here Christine was, brought back from the edge of the veil, alive, conscious, speaking to him in that voice that he had grown to love. He did not suppress the smile as quickly as he had quenched the expression with which he had favoured Jim's resurrection.

'Christine,' he said. There was no point in asking, _Are you better?_ because evidently she was. He turned his head uselessly. 'Is there a comm in the room? Can I call the lab?'

She laughed again. Humans so often found logic amusing.

'There's no need, Spock,' she said. 'They found the cure. Working on your research, they found the cure. Dr McCoy – '

'Dr McCoy is here?' Spock asked, wondering just how long he had been asleep. Six hours at most, Jim had given as the estimated time of arrival.

'He's been here a while I think,' she said. 'I'm not sure when they got in. He told me he found you dead to the world and so he gave you a sedative and slung you on a gurney.'

There was laughter in her voice. Spock raised an eyebrow.

'I might have guessed,' he said. 'And, using my work, McCoy devised a cure?' he asked, allowing his tone to sound slightly nettled. He was not in the least annoyed, but the reaction was expected.

'Together with the lab team here, I think,' she nodded. 'I don't know. I didn't take a lot of it in. He stayed with me a little while then moved on to see the other patients. I wasn't feeling very with it, if you know what I mean.'

'I know precisely what you mean,' Spock nodded, remembering how he himself had felt as he began to recover from this illness. 'But you have spoken to him about your condition, Christine?' he asked seriously. 'You are expected to recover?'

'I am expected to recover,' she told him firmly. 'There is no trace of the virus left in my system. I'm still sick because of the damage it did, but I'm not having to fight it any more. I just need to get well.'

Spock exhaled. He had not realised he had been holding his breath. He reached out toward her hand and her fingers closed around his, far cooler than they had been. He could feel the weakness in her, but it was good to hold her hand in his and feel the pulse of her blood at a slow and steady rate. He reached his other hand to her face, feeling the cool of her forehead under his fingertips. He brushed hair back from her forehead and could see the movement of her smile.

'I quite forgot that I haven't told you the news,' he said.

'What news?' she asked. Her fingers flexed in his, and he sensed her uncertainty.

'Christine, the virus worked as intended, at least as regards my eyesight,' he told her in a low, steady voice. 'I underwent one laser treatment and the cells have been eradicated.'

'Eradicated?' she echoed, wonder in her voice. 'A hundred percent?'

'A hundred percent,' he nodded. 'I have been left with scarring, so I am still quite severely visually impaired, but I can see light, colour, movement. I can make out where your hair meets your face,' he said, tracing his fingertips over the meeting of pink and gold. 'I can see the colour of your lips.'

'Oh!' she said. She seemed incapable of further speech.

'Indeed,' Spock said. He wondered if she were crying.

She seemed to be trying to sit, and he gently pressed her back down.

'Then with some treatment – ' she began.

'Treatment for the scars, or total replacement of the lens,' he nodded. 'There are no cells left and no possibility for regrowth. As soon as the procedure is performed my vision will be without fault.'

'Oh, Spock...' she said. He could feel the gladness rippling through her. Then a questioning feeling. 'Why haven't you had it yet?' she asked him, something of a tone of accusation in her voice.

'I have hardly had the chance,' he told her. 'I have been working on the virus, and I was told it would be ideal to be free of illness when I undergo the operation. It will happen in time, Christine,' he promised her. 'A few days will make little difference.'

'I am _so_ glad,' she said.

'I know,' he replied simply. He could feel the gladness radiating from her mind. 'Christine, what time is it?' he asked, feeling that there was no more to say about his sight. He wanted to find out more about the cure for this virus, and the prospect for those who were ill. 'Is the captain here? Is McCoy still in the hospital?'

'Ooh, it's about – ' She moved in the bed, evidently to look at the time. 'It's ten past one in the morning, Spock. I don't know if the Captain or Leonard are still here.'

'Going by _Enterprise_ time the hour would be 20:10,' Spock calculated. 'It's doubtful either the captain or doctor are asleep. Is my cane here? Do you see it?' he asked.

She looked about then said, 'Yes, it's on a little trolley near the gurney you were sleeping on. Do you want me to – ?'

'I do not want you to do anything which occasions movement from a recumbent position,' he said sternly. 'I can get it.'

He stood and navigated carefully back to the gurney, and found the trolley and cane with a little direction from Christine.

'If you think you will be all right, I must find the captain and Dr McCoy,' Spock told her, unfolding his cane.

'I'm in the best place,' she assured him. 'You go find the captain and Leonard. You must have a lot to discuss, and much as I'd like to learn more about this cure I really don't think my brain's up to it right now.'

'I'm sure that I will be able to brief you on developments later,' Spock nodded.

'Oh, Spock,' she said as he moved towards the door.

He turned and asked, 'Yes, Christine?'

'You might want your shoes,' she reminded him with laughter in her voice. That laughter felt like one of the best sounds Spock had ever heard.


	21. Chapter 20

It did not take long for Spock to establish that both Kirk and McCoy were in the hospital canteen eating dinner, since although it was the middle of the night in this part of the globe it was mid-evening on the _Enterprise. _An orderly took him down to the large room, which was thankfully quiet and mostly deserted at this time of night. Spock could hear the murmuring of a few people and clatters from the serving area and where people were seated, but it was all muted and sporadic noise.

He wondered who was here, eating at this time of night. Kirk and McCoy's problem was obvious. Were there other visitors here at the hospital who had come from different time zones, or just visitors who had been so bound up with their loved ones that they had not had a chance to eat until now? Were some of those eating, medical staff who had been so busy they had not noticed the time? Were there relatives of those stricken by Alunan's virus here in the canteen? Spock admitted to a moment of disquiet as he remembered Billy's reaction. He was not afraid, but he was wary of the human propensity to lash out during times of high emotion. He did not wish for another scene to unravel.

'Spock!'

Spock turned his head to the welcome voice. It was Jim, perhaps no more than thirty feet away. There was a scrape of chairs and colourful movement across the room as both Kirk and McCoy came swiftly over to greet him.

'Thank you, I will be fine now,' Spock told the orderly who was guiding him, and the man left.

'Spock, you son of a – ' McCoy began gladly, clapping a hand onto his arm as he reached him.

'Doctor, would you not agree that drugging a person without their consent is quite unethical?' Spock cut over him, a degree of sharpness in his voice which he did not honestly feel.

'I guess you've been talking to Christine then. But in your case, no it's not,' McCoy told him firmly. 'My ethics are as high as any doctor's, but I pulled medical rank there, Spock.'

'I told Bones you were off duty, but he wouldn't listen,' Kirk said with laughter in his voice. 'He said you were always on duty, and I'd tend to agree, Spock.'

'Damn right I did,' McCoy nodded. 'Spock, you were clearly exhausted and it was obvious that you wouldn't stay in bed for long enough unless compelled to do so. So I compelled you.'

Spock lifted an eyebrow but made no further protest. This kind of exchange with McCoy was traditional, and the doctor would have been quite disappointed if Spock had said nothing.

'All right, Spock,' the doctor said, taking hold of his arm and walking him back to the table. Spock did not protest the mode of guidance for once. It was good to be back in the company of his friends.

'There's a seat there, Spock,' McCoy said, putting Spock's hand to the back. 'But tell me about your eyes,' he urged. 'When are you going to let me give you the final treatment?'

Spock waited until he was seated at the table and Sacha was lying at his feet before responding. The scent of fried meat and fried potatoes was strong in the air, and he wondered exactly what his friends were eating and whether it corresponded with McCoy's on-ship diet specifications. It certainly did not suit Vulcan taste.

'With all due respect, Doctor, since I am here on Earth and within reach of ophthalmological specialists, I was going to let a properly qualified candidate undertake the work,' he told McCoy in a level voice.

'Oh,' the doctor said, sounding momentarily put out. He cleared his throat then said, 'Of course you're right, Spock. Want to let the specialists do this. It's your eyes, after all.'

'You are not offended, Doctor?' Spock asked.

'No. No, not at all,' McCoy replied, with more warmth in his tone. 'Not at all. Of course I'd do it if you wanted me to, but if it were me I'd be looking for the best qualified guy out there.'

'I think we all would in these circumstances,' Kirk nodded. 'It's not like we're on the _Enterprise_ parsecs from specialist care.'

'Yeah, just a little dent to my medical pride,' McCoy grinned. 'Don't worry about it, Spock.'

Spock watched him, fascinated at being able to see the distortion of his lips in the blur of his face. He could see the colour of McCoy's hair and even the pink of his hands against the cream of the table, and the smudge his plate of food made against that cream.

'First I would like you to tell me about the other patients infected with Dr Alunan's virus,' Spock told him. 'My grandmother, my cousin's wife – '

'All fine,' McCoy assured him. 'All undergone treatment and improving as quickly as we could hope. We've sent the specifics over to London too and all reports so far are very positive.'

'My grandmother,' Spock prompted him.

'Mrs Grayson is weak, of course. She's very old. But she's recovering very well. She still on life support but her organs are starting to heal. That meld you did kept her going long enough for us to get the treatment into her. Without it – '

He trailed off, but Spock understood the implications. He nodded, placing his hands palm down on the table, remembering the feeling of his grandmother's paper skin against his fingertips, and the rich, vibrant thoughts he had found inside. Even if he regained his sight he would never see her as he had in that meld.

'Spock, your eyes,' Kirk insisted with a degree of impatience. 'How are they? What do you see?'

Spock blinked, considering the confusion before him.

'Colour, form, all blurred of course. The _Enterprise_ uniforms make very distinct patches of colour. I can make out windows if there is light behind them or they are reasonably differentiated from the wall, light sources inside rooms, movement, large objects. Obviously I cannot see any fine detail.'

'Spock, that's wonderful,' Jim grinned, and McCoy chimed in with, 'It's more than wonderful. Spock, I never thought we'd get to this point.'

'My intention on coming to Earth was to recover my sight,' Spock reminded the doctor.

'Well of course, but that doesn't always mean it's going to happen, no matter how much Vulcan stubbornness you put to the problem. But come on, Spock,' the doctor said impatiently. 'The crisis is over, the cure's discovered. Get yourself booked in with an ophthalmologist, for God's sake! There isn't any reason for delay!'

'I intend to do some research to discover where is best for Vulcan patients, but as soon as I am pronounced medically fit and I have chosen the correct surgeon, I shall undergo the procedure,' Spock assured him. 'It is quite certain that I am just as anxious to have my sight restored as you are to see it done, Doctor.'

'I've already done the research, Spock,' McCoy said. 'I suspected you might not want to come up to the _Enterprise_ for it, and there's a place just down the coast with a world-class surgeon with specialism in xeno-ophthalmology, specifically Vulcanoids.'

'Then as soon as I am cleared by a doctor – ' Spock began.

He heard the warble of the medical scanner, and asked, 'Doctor, must you do that outside of proper medical appointments?'

'Yes, I must. I took the opportunity to give you a dose of that serum along with the sedative, Spock,' McCoy told him. 'You're completely free of the virus. You're tired, but you're well.'

'Then as soon as normal business hours resume and the time is convenient I will book myself in,' Spock nodded. 'Thank you, Doctor.'

'I'll send the details to you online. Meanwhile, why don't you think about getting some more sleep?' the doctor asked.

Spock's eyebrow rose. 'Really, Doctor. You saw to it that I have had quite enough sleep recently. I certainly don't need any more.'

'Well, in that case, I'll leave you in Jim's tender care,' McCoy told him. There was the sound of cutlery scraping on a plate, and then the doctor stood. 'I want to go check on how the patients here are recovering.'

The two waited until McCoy had cleared his tray and left the room, then Kirk turned back to Spock.

'Well, Spock,' he said. 'How do you feel after all of this? It's been a hell of a ride.'

'I am not off the 'ride' yet, Jim,' Spock reminded him.

'But you're close to the end,' Kirk insisted. There was a clattering and scraping as Jim piled up his things on his tray. 'I'll just take this over to the stack and then we can get out of here,' he said.

Spock stood, murmuring to Sacha to come to him and taking hold of her harness. He reached down and pushed his fingers deep into the dog's fur. If the treatment for his eyes was successful then it was likely that he would leave Sacha on Earth and not see her again. He did not care to examine his feelings too deeply over that eventuality. He would, of course, take his sight over the companionship of an animal, but Sacha had given him such excellent companionship.

'Do you have a coat, Spock? It's cold out there,' Jim said as he came back to him.

Spock removed his fingers from the warmth of Sacha's fur and straightened up.

'Are you planning on leaving the hospital, Jim?' he asked curiously.

'Well, it's half past one in the morning and I don't think they exactly encourage people at this hour unless there's real need,' Kirk pointed out. 'You've got an apartment, haven't you? It might be best to go back there for the night and visit Miss Chapel and your grandmother in the morning.'

'Agreed,' Spock nodded pensively. He was not entirely sanguine with leaving the hospital, but Jim was right. 'I believe my coat may be in my grandmother's room,' he recalled. 'Along with my other things.'

'Well, let's go and pick up that and anything else you need,' Kirk suggested, 'and then get the hell out of here.'

'You do not like hospitals, do you, Jim?' Spock asked curiously as they walked out into the corridor beyond.

'They give me the heebie-jeebies,' Kirk said honestly. 'Too much sickness. Too much death. I far prefer life.'

'Hospitals also give life,' Spock pointed out. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a baby crying. There was surely a maternity ward in this vast institution. While in places, in closed off rooms, there were perhaps people gravely ill and dying, there would be one place where the newest of life was brought safely into the world, and other places where the sick were getting well.

'Let's get gone, Spock,' Kirk said uncomfortably, not conceding the point.

Spock walked along beside his friend, not pressing him further. Jim was a man who lived for health and strength. He had never been comfortable with incapacity.

Spock's grandfather was still in his grandmother's room when Jim went in, on tiptoes so as not to disturb the old woman. Spock waited outside in the corridor, conceding that Jim would find it far easier to locate his things quietly. He heard Kirk moving about inside, then a murmur of voices, and two sets of footsteps moving toward the door.

'Well, Spock, this is your captain, he says?' his grandfather said quietly as they came out of the room. The ward corridor had an odd churchlike air at this time of night, the light dimmed and every word spoken softly.

'Yes, this is Captain Kirk,' Spock nodded.

'I thought Mr Grayson might be more comfortable in his own bed,' Jim said in a low voice, closing the door quietly. 'All your grandma's signs are stable, Spock. She's doing well by all accounts. But Mr Grayson was trying to sleep upright.'

'I'd be fine upright,' Spock's grandfather muttered.

'The captain is quite right,' Spock agreed. 'You must rest properly, or you will be of no use to grandma when she is awake. Let us call a cab and take you back to your house.'

'Don't be a fool, Spock. I can walk back to the house,' he said quickly.

'We are, by my estimation, one point seven three miles from your house,' Spock pointed out. 'The temperature is very likely below freezing. You are ninety seven years old. I _would_ be a fool were I to let you walk that distance, in the dark, and in such temperatures.'

There was a brief silence, then a hand touched his arm and his grandfather said gruffly, 'Well, I guess I can't shake you off long enough to turn round and come back here, Spock. They don't call Vulcans the brains of the galaxy for nothing.'

Spock raised an eyebrow. 'Perhaps I should introduce you to Dr McCoy, grandpa. Your approach to life seems somewhat similar. Nevertheless, it would be irresponsible of me to allow you to stay when you are clearly exhausted and in need of sleep. Grandma will thank you for it in the morning.'

'McCoy? That young doctor who came round and gave your grandma the injection that turned everything around?' Mr Grayson asked suddenly.

'Yes, that is Dr McCoy,' Spock nodded.

'Well then, I've met him. Nice young fellow,' he nodded. 'Very nice young man.'

'Here's your coat, Spock,' Jim said, putting the thick fabric into Spock's hands. 'If you and Mr Grayson are all right alone, I'll go on ahead and call that cab.'

'That will be fine, thank you, Jim,' Spock said, shouldering into the coat and taking hold of Sacha's harness again. 'Grandpa, I should not need direct guidance,' he said as Jim's footsteps rang away down the corridor, 'but I assume you know the way to the main entrance?'

'Yes, I know it, Spock,' he nodded. 'Do you mind if _I_ take _your_ arm, son?'

'Not at all,' Spock told him.

His grandfather's hand closed on his arm, with not a little weight being put through the grip. Spock could sense how very tired the old man was and he was grateful that Kirk had thought to make sure he came home.

'Would you like us to stay at the house, grandpa?' he asked as they moved off towards the elevator. He was not entirely comfortable with leaving him alone in such a tired and distracted state.

'There really isn't any need, Spock,' his grandfather began. He hesitated, and through the grip Spock could feel his emotions moving like muted colours. 'There isn't any need, but I'd welcome the company. It's a big house for one man on his own. Grandma always has the guest beds made up. There'll be plenty of room.'

'Then we shall stay,' Spock said decisively. It would be pleasant to return to the apartment that he had rented with Christine, to be amongst his own possessions and in a more familiar space, but the change of plan was logical and necessary.


	22. Chapter 21

For a moment when Spock woke he could not place himself. There was light, bright and still and blue-cold, shining into the room. The chill in the air manifested itself in a distinct coldness in the end of his nose and the tips of his ears. He was lying on his side, and in his sleep he had pulled the covers up so they muffled half of his head, but he was still chilled.

He blinked and tried to assess the blur around him, remembering that he was in his one of his grandparents' guest rooms. The covering that was pulled up to his head was a brightly coloured antique quilt that afforded many textures to his fingertips and showed bright patches of white, red, blue, and green in his blurred vision. He had settled down in the bed last night not with the intention of sleeping, but of resting and acceding to Jim's human expectation that because it was night, one must sleep. He frowned a little. Perhaps the sedative that McCoy had given him was still in his system. He had been lying in the bed reviewing the completed cure for the virus on his datapadd, and must have fallen asleep at some point while he was reading.

He felt about for the padd but could not find it immediately. He sat up and the cold hit him as the quilt fell back from his chest. Since he had come here with very little luggage he had been sleeping in no more than his underwear, a black, tightly fitting undershirt and underpants. His grandparents' house was an old one and had none of the protections from the cold of a newly built place. He recalled that even the windows were simple double glazed glass of the last century, rather than the standard triple glazed transparent aluminium which allowed no more transference of energy than a properly insulated modern wall.

As he swung his legs to the floor he felt something hard and cold beneath the sole of his right foot. There was his padd, lying where it must have dropped when he had fallen asleep. He picked it up and turned it on, checking it was still working and simultaneously checking the time. It was not long past eight. He had not slept for many hours.

He felt about for his clothes and found them neatly folded where he had left them on the bedside cabinet. As he began to pull them on Sacha woke and pattered across to him, her toenails clicking on the varnished wood floor and then becoming muffled as she crossed the rug. She stretched luxuriously with a distorted whine, then pushed her nose into his hand.

'I will take you out,' he promised, rubbing his fingers over the soft, short fur on top of her head. Her skull was hard beneath, and her doggish thoughts moved close to the surface. They were not sophisticated. She was largely dwelling on the need to relieve herself, a slight hunger that seemed to be with her permanently, and the scents of this new environment. She was glad to be near him, glad that he no longer smelt of sickness.

He scratched his fingernails into her scalp, then felt for her lead and harness down by the bed. He could hear no sign of activity either from his grandfather or Jim. He was certain that his grandfather was exhausted, and since Jim's body clock was working on _Enterprise_ time he was sure to sleep late too.

He put on his boots and then stood, taking Sacha's harness in his hand. He frowned a little. He was not sure where he was in the house. Jim had taken him to this room last night, shown him the location of the amenities in the bathroom down the hall, and then left him to it. He had not had a chance to properly familiarise himself with the place and it had been a long time since he had last visited this place with sight. But this was where being a telepath had its uses. He touched his fingers to Sacha's skull and sought out her primitive thoughts again. Sacha wanted to go for a walk more than anything else and it was easy to communicate to her that he wanted to facilitate that. She had no problem in remembering the route downstairs to the front door, and she guided him carefully and patiently despite her eagerness to be outside.

He fumbled for a moment with the door after donning his coat and doing it up. He was unfamiliar with the lock system, but he thought that he could leave it locked behind him and simply ring the bell when he returned. Sacha led him down the steps and around the side of the house, remembering easily the route that they had taken to the beach when Spock had walked there with his grandmother.

His feet stumbled a little over the loose rocks on the path. He was not sure what the path was composed of, but he thought he remembered a track hardened by nothing but the feet that passed along it, meandering due to the vagaries of human impulse rather than simply leading straight to the beach. Now, of course, the ground surface was muffled by snow, which made navigating even more complicated. Sacha moved slowly and just a little in front of him, patient as he tapped out the cane to feel what might be in his way. Then the path widened and merged into the beach, and Spock stopped, standing still with his feet apart and planted firmly on the thin snow that covered the hard sand.

He bent to release Sacha from her lead, and told her to go. She thudded off across the beach, barking joyfully. He could hear the scatter of snow from her kicking paws, and then the splash as she plunged into the water. The waves were not strong today. As he stood on the beach he could hear them surging in and sucking back across the shingle. If he turned his eyes in that direction he could make out the movement of the white ruff of foam against the darker grey-green of the seawater, running up against dull shingle and dissipating into nothing. The air that he breathed into his lungs was crisp and cold enough to hurt.

He touched his cane into the snow in front of him and walked forward with great care, carrying Sacha's harness and lead in one hand. He could still hear Sacha galloping about the beach. As she saw him move she skewed around and ran back to him, panting hot breath over his hand as she reached him.

'I am all right,' he murmured, stroking the back of her neck. Her fur was startlingly cold in comparison to the heat of her breath.

He moved forward again. Even though he did not touch her for guidance she stayed by his side as long as he was walking.

The snow seemed to lend the shingle some solidity, a fact for which he was grateful. Then the stones beneath the snow began to dissipate, until there was nothing but snow-skimmed sand, and then sand that had been washed dark and clean by the action of the waves. He could see the colour change as a definite line between white and dirty brown.

He crouched and touched his fingers to the wet, freezing sand, feeling the soft slick of grains between his fingertips. How odd it would be to see. He looked down at his hand, a pinkish blur against the darker sand. Where his fingertips were dirtied with the tiny grains his hand seemed to merge into the ground beyond. He tried to recall how his hand would look with perfect sight. He knew intellectually about the whorls of his fingerprints, the shape and size of his fingernails. He knew that the sand was made of up tiny fragments of rock, each a slightly different shape and size. He _knew_ these things, but his mind would not conjure a perfect image from memory. It had been too long, his brain had spent so much time reconfiguring its pathways to make him as efficient in his blindness as possible.

He wondered how long it would take to learn to see again, to understand all the visual input from normal vision. He recalled melding with T'Pring months ago and the confusion he had felt at the images she saw. Depth had made no sense, shapes had been confusing. But in his recent meld with his grandmother he had seen, seen without wonder or confusion. It had all made sense. But away from the meld that felt like something of a dream. His perception and understanding had been modified by hers, borne along as he shared her dream. He had not seen through her eyes, but only seen the images she was creating in her dreaming mind.

As he stared ahead of him he could see the white bars of waves and the dark swell of the sea, blending into the grey block of the sky. But that was an abstract painting. It was nothing but a suggestion of what was there. He closed his eyes and tried to see the waves in his imagination. It was little use. The shapes started to form, and then slipped away.

Into the darkness behind his eyelids an idea of Christine manifested itself. He did not see her in his mind. Instead he caught her scent and the sensation of his fingers on her skin and in her hair. He heard her voice, but not distinct words. He imagined her as she would be if she were safely back in the apartment, sleeping while he took Sacha for her walk. She would be wearing some scant silk negligee that would be cool and slipping under his fingers. She would smell faintly of sweat from a night sleeping beside the heat of his body. When he returned she would stretch and yawn and mumble something in a voice muted by sleep. Perhaps he would slip back into bed beside her and explore the ridges and valleys of her body with his hands. Perhaps he would leave her and return with coffee so that she could wake up properly. To be honest he preferred the idea of the former this morning.

He missed her. It had not been long between the onset of this virus and this morning here on the beach, but he missed her. He wanted to have her safe and well and to hear the smile in her voice and feel her presence close to him. They had been separated by unconsciousness on one side or another for too many days and he had missed her presence in his mind. He could not feel her now. Likely she was sleeping. Perhaps when she awoke he would feel the faintest awareness of her consciousness, despite the distance between them. What was a distance like this to a bond of the type he shared with Christine? Sometimes he was aware of Jim even across the empty fields of space. A few miles were nothing between himself and Christine.

He felt something cold on his cheek, then on the tip of his ear, then on the back of his hand. He held his hand out, palm up, and caught another flurry of snowflakes. When he opened his eyes and looked toward the sea again he could see that the darkness of the water was becoming ameliorated by the white haze of snow that must be coming down thick and fast and moving in to shore.

He exhaled sharply and stood, brushing the cold sand from his fingertips. He had been outside for long enough and the cold was starting to penetrate his coat and get through into his bones. If he stayed out much longer without moving about and creating his own heat he would start to become sluggish, and then dangerously cold. Impaired reactions were far more dangerous to him without perfect sight to help him compensate for lack of balance and poor decision making.

Sacha had run off again and he could hear her pounding along on the wave-cleaned sand. She had had a good run. He should return to the house and see if Jim or his grandfather were awake and could assist him in contacting the surgeon that McCoy had recommended. The sooner he was booked in for treatment the sooner his speculation would be settled with the reality of sight.

'Sacha, come,' he called aloud. His voice sounded thin and fragile in the great open space, against the sound of the ocean pushing onto the shore. Nevertheless, she heard him, and raced back to him. He refixed her harness and took hold of the handle.

'Home, Sacha,' he said, touching his fingers to her skull again, letting her know that he meant the place they had just left, not the rented apartment some distance away.

She was panting, and he could feel her joyous agitation from her run on the beach. The scent of salt water rose from her fur. He wondered just how wet she had allowed herself to get. He knew that swimming full bodied in the water was not beyond her, even in this cold. He did not want to touch her to find out, though, and further chill his already cold hands. He should have worn the gloves that were in his coat pocket, but he did not like to muffle his sense of touch in that way. He rubbed his hands briefly against the fabric of his coat, chafing some warmth into them, then walked on.

She led him unwaveringly back to the house. The closer they got the thicker the snow lay on the ground, but she was leading him back along the path they had already broken. She began to climb the steps to the porch and he followed her, then felt about for the doorchime to the right of the door. After a few circles of his hand across the doorframe he found it, and pressed the bell. A few moments later the door was being opened by Jim and the warmth of the house hit him as he stepped inside.


	23. Chapter 22

'Been taking Sacha for a walk?' Jim asked as Spock stamped the snow off his boots and stepped into the house. 'Uh, she's soaking wet, Spock. I'll put her in the utility until she dries off, if that's all right with you.'

'Yes, of course,' Spock said. He did not wish to cover his grandparents' house with sand and salt water. 'She does not often have the opportunity to swim. I believe she – made the most of it, as you would say.'

'I believe she did,' Jim laughed. He bent down to stroke Sacha's head. 'Come on, girl. I'll take her harness off, Spock, and wash the sand off it. I don't know how, but she's got it plastered all over her.'

'Thank you, Jim,' Spock said.

He stood by the door, listening as Jim led Sacha away, talking to her brightly. He remembered the path he had followed into the sitting room when he had first visited his grandparents and followed the same route carefully to find a chair. When Jim returned he was sitting in an armchair with his fingers steepled before his face, letting warmth creep back into his body while he let his thoughts wander.

'Have you eaten, Spock? Your grandpa's still asleep and I don't want to wake him, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind me fixing us some coffee and toast.'

'Thank you, Jim,' Spock nodded.

He wanted to ask immediately for help in contacting the surgeon that McCoy had recommended, but that would require checking his messages for the details the doctor had promised to send him and contacting the surgeon's department himself. He would need Jim's help to access his grandparents' communications terminal and put the call through. He was certain that Jim, in his human way, would prefer coffee and breakfast before dealing with these things.

He stood and went back into the hall, extending his cane and recalling the path to his room upstairs. He closed his eyes. In this enclosed space the jumble of colours and shapes were more confusing than helpful. Distance was a particularly treacherous thing because things that were close could appear far away, and vice versa.

He went upstairs and into his room, trying not to make too much noise with the cane on the wooden floor and skirting boards upstairs. He could sense the presence of his grandfather and did not want to wake him.

He was at the head of the stairs with the padd in his hand when he heard his grandfather call out, 'Spock?'

He turned and moved toward the voice. He was not sure where his grandparents' room was, and was working on a poorly remembered memory of the house when he was a child.

His cane pushed along the skirting board and then bumped out and skipped inward at the door frame. This was where the voice had come from. He put his hand on the unpainted wood of the door, but did not open it.

'Yes, grandpa?' he said.

'Come on in here, Spock,' his voice came from beyond the door.

Spock hesitated, uncertain. 'Do you require something, grandpa?'

There was a low chuckle. 'Yes, Spock. I require _you_. Come on in.'

Spock took a breath, then opened the door. The room was lit so dimly that there were barely any features to see that might help him navigate.

'Come on in, Spock,' his grandfather said again. 'Take a seat. On the bed, son. Don't stand on ceremony. I'd come to you but I'm stiff when I wake up. It takes time for my arms and legs to start cooperating.'

The room smelt of his grandma's perfume and various skin products, mixed up with wood, moth deterrent, and old paper. Spock walked carefully toward his grandfather's voice until the cane touched softness at knee height.

'That's it, son. Sit down,' his grandfather told him. Then he shivered. 'You brought the cold in with you, Spock. You've been out?'

'I took Sacha for a walk,' Spock explained. 'It has just started snowing again.'

'Well, never mind. I'm warm enough under the covers. Sit down.'

Spock sat uncomfortably on the edge of the mattress, and his grandfather laughed again.

'You were built for the military, Spock,' he said. 'Back straight as a ramrod.'

'Starfleet is not a military institution, grandpa,' Spock reminded him. 'And the Vulcan people, as a rule, are not militaristic.'

'You know, I did quite a lot of research into the Vulcans when your mother told us she was marrying a Vulcan man,' his grandfather told him conversationally. 'Don't look so surprised.' (Spock did not bother to refute that he looked surprised.) 'I may come across to you as a hoary old man who's barely been off world and doesn't care what's beyond the moon. Some days I look up at the night sky and I can't believe there are people up there in space, even though I've been there myself. I tell you, that one trip to Vulcan was enough for me, at the speeds they travelled those days. And the heat. Good lord... But no. I was interested, Spock, for your mother's sake and for my own. I found out a lot about Vulcan culture and society. Sat at my computer researching for hours, even went over to San Francisco and talked to a couple of Vulcans there. I found out enough to be worried about Amanda, and enough to reassure myself that despite my worries she'd be all right. It's a big thing, you know, losing your daughter to another world. It's a hard thing. It took me some time to forgive Sarek – '

'Forgive?' Spock echoed, an eyebrow raising up.

'Yes, Spock. Forgive,' his grandfather said in a carefully tolerant tone. 'Forgive this alien man who was older than I was taking my baby girl away to another world. Forgive him for being different, exotic, strange. For being stronger than me, cleverer than me, better than me in every way. The Ambassador to all of Vulcan taking _my_ daughter – and here I was, just some guy from the East coast who'd plodded along all my life, never doing anything notable, never putting my name out there. Just some human guy.'

Spock was taken aback. He had always admired his grandfather as a person, as a man who looked after his family, as the man who had brought up Amanda to be such a valuable and graceful person, a strong woman and a good mother. Certainly he had never made a name for himself anywhere outside his own circles, but that did not make him any less admirable a person.

'Grandpa, you are not – ' he began.

'No, no, Spock,' his grandfather murmured across his words. 'No, say what you like, but when you put me alongside this guy from Vulcan, the Ambassador you see on the news, older than me, wiser than me, cleverer than me – No, I did not like him taking my little girl away. No father would. Not straight out, when his girl comes to him and tells him it's _that_ person that she's marrying. If she'd come saying she was marrying the King of England I would have been just as suspicious, just as defensive. But no. She made a good decision. Your father is a good man. They had a good son. I wished your mom had been able to have more, but things don't always work out like you want them.'

'I would accept that as an axiom,' Spock nodded, caught briefly in a place where he wondered how it would be to have a brother or a sister, a true brother or sister, child of both his mother and his father. There was Sybok, but that was not the same. He was so much older, fully Vulcan, and so very –

No. He cut that thought off. He made it his business to think of Sybok as little as possible. There was no profit in dwelling on him.

He wondered if his mother regretted that Spock was her only child. He knew that just bringing this one pregnancy to term had been a difficult and traumatic experience. He had not been the first child conceived. He did not know if he had been the last. Somehow he had never thought to ask his mother if she and Sarek had tried again. He suspected that if she had she would not want to discuss it.

'You do, however, have other grandchildren,' he reminded his grandfather.

'Yes, Spock, but none of them are quite like you. None of them are your mother's child.'

'That much seems quite self-evident,' Spock nodded.

'No, I don't mean it like that, Spock. I don't mean it logically, scientifically,' his grandfather said with a hint of impatience. 'The addition of your father and your mother didn't result in a scientific equation. It resulted in _you. _More and different to the sum of your parts. What I'm trying to say, Spock, is that I'm glad of you. _You._ You are a unique and special person. At first I thought you'd just be a little Vulcan, one like every other Vulcan. I thought your whole race was a race of people who were all the same. But I know different now. You are all unique, just like humans. You are and are not your father. And I can see your mother in you too, all through you. I can see your grandmother. Hell, I can see myself in you. You're stubborn as a block of wood, just like me. And I can see my mom and dad in you, sometimes my sisters. I can see my Aunt Nettie, just in the way you hold your hands behind your back. I don't say these things enough to people. I don't tell them they're special. I don't tell them I – love them. I never said that enough to your grandma, and now she's – '

He stopped abruptly, before his voice began to break.

'Grandma is getting better,' Spock reminded him gently. 'She is getting well.'

'She's so old, Spock,' he said in something like a whisper. 'We both are.' He cleared his throat, moved restlessly in the bed, then said, 'I thought I could avoid saying anything about her, avoid all – this. This emotion. It must be disgusting to you, Spock. But I can't avoid talking about her. I never could.'

'Emotion does not disgust me, grandpa,' Spock said. He shifted up the bed until he was sitting closer to the head. He reached out his hand and after a hesitation his grandfather's hand touched his and closed around it. Spock closed his eyes. His grandfather's emotions were chaotic, strong, overwhelming. He was filled with love and fear. Spock tightened his hand and projected calm reassurance.

'We're both so old, Spock,' his grandfather said in a desperate tone. 'Your father's only middle aged, isn't he? Well we're not. Half a decade younger than him, and we're old, old people. Frail, fragile human beings.'

The realisation hit Spock like a wave. He felt as if he were falling. Perhaps he was only picking up on his grandfather's fear. He did not know. But it was a real, real thing. Some day soon his grandparents would die. Following them would be his mother. Jim, McCoy, Christine. _Christine..._ He was Vulcan. He would outlive them all. He would lose them all, and there was nothing he could do to change that. Perhaps this was why his people tried so hard to suppress their love, because love, inevitably, was a loss too great to be borne.

He swallowed hard.

'Grandma is getting well,' he said again. 'She will be home soon, I am sure.'

'Yes,' his grandfather said. 'Yes, I'm sure she will.'

The old man stirred and the mattress moved up and down under Spock.

'Here, help me up,' he said. 'I'm ready to get up now. My bones have come alive.'

Spock stood and reached out his hand. His grandfather took it and stood up, putting a lot of weight through the grip. Spock held him until he was sure he was steady, then let go.

'The Captain is making coffee downstairs,' he said. 'I will go down and tell him to put out an extra mug.'

He turned to go downstairs, considering what his grandfather had said, and what he had felt. His fear had been real and deep. It was not a fear of dying. It was a fear of losing his wife before he himself succumbed to age.

'I thought I'd lost you,' Kirk said in an amused tone as Spock came into the kitchen.

'I was talking with my grandfather,' Spock replied.

'You look pensive, Spock?'

Spock shook his head. 'Not pensive,' he said. 'We were talking of – serious issues.'

Life, death, and love, he thought. The most serious issues of them all.

Jim seemed to understand his preoccupation and the fact that he did not wish to talk about it, because he turned back to the kitchen counter and started moving things about there.

'Oh, I said I would ask you to make an extra mug of coffee,' Spock remembered.

'I'll do that,' Kirk replied. 'I'll get out some more bread too. I held off on the toast when it was obvious you weren't coming right back down. Nothing worse than cold toast.'

There was a multitude of things worse than cold toast, but Spock did not point that out to his captain. He had had plenty of practice getting used to figures of speech in growing up with a human mother, even if she did try to modify her language in deference to Vulcan directness. Metaphors were ingrained in human language, it seemed.

'After breakfast, Jim, will you help me to contact the hospital about my eye surgery?' he asked. 'I want to get it arranged as soon as possible.'

Kirk turned round swiftly. 'Dammit, Spock, why didn't you mention it as soon as you came in?' he asked. 'I would have helped you then!'

'I have observed that humans usually need coffee, if not breakfast, in order to function in a useful manner,' Spock pointed out in a level tone.

Jim laughed. 'Are you saying I'm useless before I get some caffeine into me, Spock?' he asked.

'Not at all, Captain, but – '

Kirk waved his protest away. 'Mr Spock, you are a perceptive man. I will get the coffee and toast done, and then I will feel awake enough to help you contact the hospital. Perhaps by this evening we'll have a schedule for the operation.'


	24. Chapter 23

[AN: I was hoping to get more written. But then Robin Williams happened and I can't get myself to concentrate on happy writing instead of dark writing. I'll do my best to get back to it.]

It was later that day that Spock went to the hospital to visit Christine. He was hoping to find her better and he was not disappointed. Her room felt light and cool as he stepped in through the door. The beeping of the monitoring devices was less and quieter, and he assumed that she was on far less support than she had been. There was a scent of food in the air and she told him she had just finished her first proper meal since being admitted to hospital.

'They said they might be able to let me out tomorrow,' she said brightly. She was sitting up in bed and Spock could tell how much better she was by her voice alone. 'My heart's recovering well and the damage to my lungs has healed. All of the organ damage began to reverse as soon as the virus was cured.'

She moved in the bed, her body making a dark shape against the pillows, and Spock assumed she was twisting to look at the overhead display which, as a nurse, she could interpret much better than the average patient.

'My heart function's better than it was a few hours ago,' she said. 'They want me to stay until they're sure the cell weakness is stabilised, but all the signs are good.'

'That is very relieving news,' Spock nodded.

'What is it, Spock?' she asked, her tone changing.

'I beg your pardon?'

'You've got something you're waiting to say. I can tell. What is it? It's something good, isn't it?'

Spock allowed a hint of a smile to touch his lips. He had watched this type of interaction between his mother and father as he was growing up, and had watched it with increasing curiosity as an adult. Was this love, he had wondered. Was this a natural result of the mental bond that occurred when one of a partnership was Vulcan, or was it just the natural result of two beings who had found themselves so in tune with one another that they could perceive each other's thoughts without the help of telepathy? He had seen similar displays between entirely human couples.

'I do have something to say,' he nodded. 'I contacted the Beth Meyer Eye Hospital in Baltimore this morning and by fortuitous coincidence the surgeon that Dr McCoy recommended was free to speak to me. She is very willing to do the surgery and Starfleet Medical will cover the cost. It will be an operation likely to last no more than two hours and it is expected I will able to leave later that day, barring complications. It is a relatively simple procedure.'

'Oh, Spock, that's wonderful!' Christine smiled, sitting forward in the bed. 'How soon can it be done?'

'I have yet to fix an exact date. I will go down there tomorrow to donate a genetic sample so that the team can clone new lenses. It is likely to be some time next week, as Ms Alchurch's schedule allows. She is going to speak to me in person tomorrow to arrange the date. It will, of course, be subject to cancellation in the event of an emergency case coming.

'Oh, Spock,' Christine said again. She reached out and put her arms around him, and he moved forward so as to make it easier for her, sitting in bed as she was. He could feel the joy in her mind pushing into his body as she held him. 'I will be out of here as soon as I can,' she promised him. 'I want to be with you for this.'

'You will be with me for this,' he assured her. 'The captain and Dr McCoy are still here and will accompany me tomorrow. But if you are not out of hospital by next week I will be having a serious talk with your doctor.'

'Christine Elizabeth Chapel!'

Spock jolted back from Christine's arms as if a marauding party of Klingons had entered the room. The door had opened so hard that it sounded as if it had hit the wall.

'Why on earth didn't you tell me!' her mother continued in a high pitched, angry voice. The door banged closed behind her and footsteps clacked across the room. 'Lying in the hospital for God knows how many days, seriously ill – '

Christine drew in breath. Spock could sense the tension. Christine's mother was a dark moving blur and he could not make out anything of her facial expression, but it was quite obvious that she was angry.

'Mother, I was unconscious for most of that time,' Christine said reasonably.

'Then you, Mr Spock,' Dr Chapel turned on him. 'Could you not manage just one call to let me know?'

'Spock succumbed to the virus before I did, mom,' Christine told her patiently. 'Look, I'm sorry no one called you. I really am. I guess my emergency contacts are all people on the _Enterprise_ – it doesn't make sense to list people on Earth when I'm never here – and no one knew to call you. Spock's been working himself ragged developing the cure for the virus – at least he was as soon as he'd got better – and his own grandmother is ill too. We just didn't think.'

Spock stood calmly, straightening his top as he did. Sacha was already on her feet, on guard against this enraged intruder. He put his hand on her neck and made her sit.

'Dr Chapel, I do apologise,' he said in a level voice. 'As Christine says, we have been quite distracted.'

There was a long silence which, to Spock, was filled with a palpable mental hum from Dr Chapel that seemed to expand into the room. She was catching herself, reining in her anger and fear, steadying her emotions. She stood there at the foot of Christine's bed, a blur of red and dark blue and dark hair, turning between the two of them as if she could not decide who to attend to. Finally she turned back to Christine.

'Just one call, Christine,' she said in an artificially steady voice. 'Just one call, Mr Spock. I wouldn't have known at all if I hadn't bumped into Billy Grayson in the street. Does it take a highschool crush to tell me what's going on with my own daughter?'

'Oh, Billy was never my highschool crush,' Christine said quickly. 'It was all one-sided.'

'That's not the _point_,' Dr Chapel snapped.

'I am _sorry_, mom. Truly I am,' Christine said. Spock wondered if he should be holding himself between the two women. He was not certain what her mother might do in her anger.

'Oh, Chrissie,' she suddenly said, her voice breaking. She moved past Spock to take the chair that he had been using, sitting down with a slump and reaching out to her daughter. 'I'm so glad you're all right.'

Spock raised an eyebrow. Human emotions frequently amazed him, especially female ones. How could a person go from anger to apparent tears so very quickly.

'I'm all right, mom,' Christine was reassuring her mother. 'I'm all right. They have very good doctors here and I'm getting better. I should be out in a few days. It didn't hit me as hard as it hit Spock's grandmother.'

Dr Chapel turned at that. 'Your grandmother, Spock?' Her voice was much more composed now. 'Oh, I am so sorry. Is she – '

'She is recovering,' Spock told her quickly, understanding that the woman was trying to avoid asking, _Is she dead?_

'Well...' Dr Chapel said, as if she had run out of things to say. 'I'm sorry, Mr Spock. I was so worried about Christine. You do understand?'

Spock opened his mouth, but he was uncertain of what he was going to say. He could not honestly say that he did understand such outbursts, but he was certainly familiar with such scenes in humans. Understanding them was not a requisite for simply weathering the storm.

'It is quite all right, Dr Chapel,' he said at last. He turned back to Christine. 'Christine, would you like some time alone with your mother?'

'Oh,' Christine said. He caught the sense that he had just put her in a difficult position, that she did not want some time alone but that she had no way of saying that in a way that her mother would understand.

'You must be tired by having us both in here,' he said. 'I shall – go and fetch coffee for us all. Sacha, come.'

The dog obediently came to his side and he took her harness and moved toward the door. He could sense Christine floundering in his wake but he was not sure what he could do. If he were to stay he would offend Dr Chapel. In going he upset Christine. On balance he had decided that the shock and upset that Dr Chapel was suffering at discovering how ill her daughter had been outweighed Christine's mortification at being left alone with the parent who appeared to be vacillating between anger and remorse.

He stopped just outside the door, uncertain of where to go now. He knew that there was a drinks machine at the end of the ward. He had heard people using it and could smell the coffee. But it was impractical for him to go and fetch two or three drinks and carry them through the ward whilst also holding onto Sacha's harness. He told her quietly to sit and just stood there, thinking that if he heard a member of staff come by he could ask for help.

He moved his fingers on the harness. Despite Jim's best efforts there were still grains of sand in every crease of the bright fabric that wrapped across the metal to show that Sacha was a working dog. He could still smell salt and that dubious fish scent that always came with the sea, even though Sacha herself was now perfectly clean.

Inside he could hear Christine and her mother talking. There was no point in trying not to hear their voices. He could concentrate on something else but he certainly could not stop the sounds from entering his ears, and at some point his mind would force him to dwell on what he had heard.

' – going to have to call your father back from Memphis,' he heard Dr Chapel saying in a distracted voice. 'He's supposed to be at the conference right through the weekend, but – '

'Mom, dad doesn't need to come back,' Christine insisted. 'Besides, he could beam up for a couple hours and go straight back if he wanted to. He wouldn't have to miss anything.'

'Oh, you know he wouldn't want to do that with you in hospital,' her mother insisted. 'He'd want to be on call...'

'And there, you wonder why I didn't tell you,' Christine said rather testily.

'Now, don't blame your father's misplaced sense of responsibility on me,' her mother retorted. 'I don't own him.'

'No,' Christine sighed. 'No, mom, you're right. I know. No one owns him. That's why he's always away.'

'Chrissie, _you_ work in outer space,' her mother reminded her.

'Well, there didn't seem much left for me on Earth after Roger went off,' Christine began in a wistful tone.

'Do you miss him still?' her mother asked, her voice softer, almost difficult to catch. 'I know how hard it was...'

Christine drew in breath. Spock could hear it even through the door. He closed his eyes, wondering what she was going to say. He should not be listening, but he did not move away. She had always been very close about Roger Korby, keeping the memory of him distant from Spock during melds.

'I guess sometimes,' Christine said eventually. 'I mean, in the way that you miss an old place where you lived or a good pair of shoes. But I have Spock, mom. I have _him_ now. It's not a flash in the pan or a poorly thought out romance. I've wanted Spock for a long time, and now I have him, and Roger's – Roger's like a piece of paper blown away by the wind. You know, you reach out and try to catch it and you don't, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that much, because you've got a whole book in your hand, and you don't need that little scrap with a few words on it. Does that make sense, mom?'

'It makes sense, Chrissie,' her mother said in a surprisingly soft voice. 'Oh, yes, it makes sense.'

Spock straightened up, away from the wall. He had not been aware that he had been leaning back until the wall was solid and cool behind him. He had been so intent on listening to Christine and her mother. He felt an odd warmth in the core of his body. What was it? Reassurance? Satisfaction? Why did he always feel so uncertain about Christine despite his knowledge of the strength of her love? Perhaps he was used to being outside, to not being quite enough like the people around him to fit in, always saying something or doing something that was considered abhorrent. Even Jim – and more so McCoy – found his behaviour shocking on occasion. Perhaps he was waiting for Christine to lose patience with his half-Vulcan ways and reject him as so many people did. But even with their differences Jim did not reject him. McCoy did not. And he was growing more and more certain that Christine would not. Her love may have grown out of a very human 'crush,' but it was real, and it was unfaltering.

He stepped away from the wall and walked with Sacha away from Christine's room. His grandmother's room was in this same ward and he thought he would be able to find it if he extended his awareness of his surroundings and the minds within them using the techniques taught to him by T'Lan on Vulcan. It was good to navigate like this without help beyond Sacha and his cane. He would see his grandmother and leave Christine and her mother with a chance to talk, and perhaps when he returned all would be harmonious between them.

A little way down the corridor he knocked softly and entered his grandmother's room, cautious lest he had been mistaken and got the wrong room. He was certain almost instantly that he was correct, though. He could sense his grandmother's mind as soon as he opened the door, and then she said in a frail voice, 'Spock! Oh, Spock, it's good to see you. Are you alone?'

'Yes, I am quite alone, grandma,' he assured her, letting Sacha lead him into the room. 'You appear to be much better.'

'Thanks to you,' she told him. 'There, Spock – there's a chair just by the bed. Have you got it?'

His cane clattered into the blurred object by the bed and he sat down in the seat, turning it towards his grandmother's bed.

'I have been told that you are recovering well,' he said, and she laughed quietly.

'As well as my old bones will let me, Spock. I guess I'll be here for a while yet, but I'm getting there. I'm getting there.'

'I cannot stay for long,' he told her. 'I am supposed to be fetching coffee for Christine and her mother. But I wished to assure myself that you were well, and to tell you that I am scheduled to undergo an operation on my eyes next week. It should leave me with perfect vision.'

'Oh, Spock!'

His ears caught the momentary spike of the biobed reading as his grandmother's heart beat faster and then calmed again. He reached out a hand to her and she took it. He could feel her pulse in her fingers.

'Do not allow yourself to become agitated,' he warned her.

'No, I'm not, I'm not,' she assured him. 'I'm too tired to be agitated. I'm just so happy. Have you told your mom and dad?'

Spock shook his head. 'Not as yet. I will wait to see if the surgery is successful rather than building Amanda's hopes.'

His grandmother squeezed his hand. 'You're a good boy, Spock. Thank you for coming to tell me. Now you go and get that coffee and spend some time with your girl. You deserve it.'


	25. Chapter 24

The snow stretched down the coast to Baltimore and further south still. Had they been relying on surface transport to travel to the Beth Meyer Eye Hospital Spock would have been concerned that their plans might have been disrupted. On the morning that Spock was due to attend for the operation Christine opened the curtains in the bedroom to tell him, 'Well, it's a proper blizzard out there, Spock, and the met reports say it'scovering a lot of the coast. Thank god for transporters.'

'I would thank the numerous people who have worked tirelessly on inventing and improving transportation technology over the years, rather than a mythical deity, Christine,' Spock said in a rather terse voice, sitting up in bed and swinging his legs to the floor.

There was a moment of silence, then she came back across the room to him and took both his hands in hers. She said softly, 'It's all right, Spock. I'm nervous too.'

'I do not understand – ' Spock began. But he did. He did understand. She was right. The idea of the operation filled him with numerous emotions and he was not quite sure how to identify them, let alone process and understand them. Nervousness, as Christine had guessed, was one of the strongest.

'I'll go make myself some toast and put some coffee on for both of us,' she told him. 'You can drink up to eight a.m., can't you?'

'That is correct,' Spock nodded.

Many things had progressed in the field of surgery, but it was still not advisable for patients to eat immediately before an operation, and Spock had been without food since the night before. The lack did not bother him. He was quite capable of going for a number of days without food if necessary. He would have been content to go without the coffee too, but he recognised that Christine needed to share this meal with him.

When they stepped out of the door to go to the waiting the taxi the snow and wind hit Spock like an icy cloth being whipped against him. Even Sacha whimpered a little at the intensity of the weather. Spock took firmer hold of Christine's arm and followed her to the shuttle, where quiet and calm was restored as the door closed.

'To the transporter station?' the driver asked over his shoulder.

'Correct,' Spock nodded.

Sacha lay down at his feet, and he folded his cane and put it into his pocket. It would be indescribably odd to not rely on Sacha and his cane...

'Pleasant out, isn't it?' the driver asked as he pulled away from the kerb.

'I would not characterise a blizzard and temperatures of approximately minus ten Celsius as pleasant,' Spock replied.

'Sarcasm, Spock,' Christine said to him under her breath.

Spock nodded. He felt too distracted to keep up with the illogical permutations of human conversation today. In fact, he was quite grateful that he had Christine at his side to guide him from the taxi into the transporter station and attend to the small necessary details of their transport to the hospital in Baltimore. It did not take long to be processed for their journey and beamed directly to the hospital.

'Well, it looks as horrible outside here as it was back home,' she told him in a murmur, in the hospital's transporter room. Spock was aware of what seemed like a window to his right, which was filled with a dim white mass that must be the whirling snow. 'I'm just glad we could beam right to the hospital.'

'It was convenient,' Spock murmured. He turned his head sharply as he gained the sense of a familiar presence. 'Is that the Captain?'

'It is indeed, Spock,' Jim said, coming forward to meet him. 'Bones is off talking to Ms Alchurch about the surgery. He wants to be able to observe. She said that the cornea and lens cloning process went beautifully. Everything's ready.'

Spock nodded. 'I would have expected to be contacted had the cloning been unsuccessful.'

'Well, we'd better get up to the ward,' Christine said brightly. Spock distinctly heard her add in a very low undertone to Kirk, 'He's nervous,' as they began to walk. He resisted comment. He knew that his control was slipping today, and that any retort to her would simply act as evidence of that.

Kirk fell into step on the other side of Spock, so that he was flanked by the two humans. He distinctly got the feeling that he was being protected, but he was not sure from was grateful for their presence, though.

'And here's the man himself,' he heard McCoy say warmly as they entered the ward on the second floor of the hospital. 'Spock, I've been talking through the operation with Ms Alchurch. It's a very simple procedure.'

'I am aware of that, Doctor,' Spock said.

'He's right,' Ms Alchurch said, and Spock turned towards her blurred form. 'It's detailed work, but not too complicated. I can't hang around for long, Mr Spock. I need to get down and prepare for the surgery. I want to get you in as soon as possible, since we seem to be going through a lull right at this moment. I just wanted to check that you're happy with going ahead with the operation, and you don't have any questions?'

Spock shook his head. 'None at all, doctor. I am happy to undergo the surgery.'

'And you understand that although your eyes won't be bandaged when you wake up, don't expect your sight to be immediately perfect. It will take a couple of days for the transplants to settle.'

'Yes, I understand,' Spock nodded.

'Then I'll leave you in the hands of Nurse Moreno. She'll take you through everything that needs to be done.'

Spock's attention focussed down as the nurse came over and took him through the consent forms and showed him to his bed in the ward. There were obviously other patients here but he did not allow himself to notice anything but what the nurse was telling him. He heard Christine put down his small overnight bag, which he had brought just in case. Then the nurse gave him a gown to change into, and Jim and McCoy left him with Christine to change behind closed curtains.

'You'll be all right,' Christine said softly to him as he sat down, barefooted and gowned, on the edge of his bed.

'I am perfectly aware of that, Christine,' he replied.

She kissed the top of his head, and he felt her emotions of love, concern, and apprehension.

'I believe you are more nervous than I,' he said, reaching out to her hand and feeling the smallness of her fingers, the strength of her palm. His hands enveloped hers.

'Well, maybe I am,' she smiled.

There was a rustle at the curtain and the nurse looked round, asking, 'Are you all ready, Mr Spock? I have instructions to give you your pre-med. It's just a couple of pills to reduce the nausea and alleviate a couple of other symptoms you might get from the anaesthetic.'

'Thank you, Nurse,' Spock said, reaching out his hand. She gave him two smooth, small pills and a cup of water, and he took them swiftly.

'They'll work pretty quickly with your physiology,' she told him. 'You might find yourself becoming a bit drowsy, so I'd suggest lying down in bed. You're scheduled to go down in half an hour.'

Spock nodded, but he was grateful when the nurse left him alone. He would have rather been entirely alone and given the chance to meditate, but Jim and McCoy came in and sat down by the bed. Humans, it seemed, could not conceive of leaving a person alone at a time like this. They insisted on talking, and he lay in bed replying to their occasional questions, but his mind was largely focussed on what was about to happen. He was not nervous about the surgery itself. He had undergone a number of operations in his life and felt no fear. It was what happened when he woke up that caused him a tremulous mixture of apprehension and anticipation.

Time drifted closer to the appointed moment. When he was transferred to a gurney to be taken down to the operation theatre he found that the nurse had been right. The pre-med pills had left him drowsy and a little disoriented. He lay on the gurney watching the lights move overhead as he was pushed down the corridors, the footsteps of his friends and Christine sounding like a small troop movement on the hard floor. And then he was in the anteroom to the operating theatre and only Christine was there while an intravenous transfusion device was hooked to his arm and the anaesthetic was slowly introduced to his system.

'Can you count backwards from a hundred for me, Mr Spock?' Ms Alchurch asked.

The idea seemed rather ridiculous. McCoy had never asked him to count. But in deference to human custom he did, and by the time he was reaching ninety he found himself becoming confused and slurred, and then everything drifted away.

'''''''''''''''

The world reformed slowly. He was distantly aware of footsteps on hard floors, of murmured voices, of the occasional clatter of hard objects. There was the soft beeping of medical monitors. The bed was soft under his shoulder blades, back, pelvis. His feet were tented beneath softness.

He blinked, and his eyes felt as if they were filled with grit. He blinked again.

He looked.

He stared, caught into silence by the amazement of it. He felt a grin trying to come to his face and he caught it, silenced it, pushed it away. But inside he felt as if he were on fire, as if a supernova were happening inside his chest. That was _sight_. That was the ceiling up above him, a continuous panel of white with a light situated directly above his bed, a light with detail, edges, clear facets that he could see with his eyes.

Christine was there, looking down at him. For a moment he did not recognise her. He saw a woman, blue eyes, hair a darker shade of blonde than he had thought it was, a different style than he had expected, clothes that were not quite what he had assumed. He stared at the sight in front of him, trying so hard to keep control of the emotions that were surging and trying to reach the surface.

He swallowed, and could not speak due to the dryness of his throat.

'Are you thirsty?' Christine asked, and her voice was reassuringly familiar, coming from the face that he did not quite recognise.

He nodded, turning his head sideways, following the movement of her arm as she reached for a glass. He lifted his arm and it felt like lead. When he tried to take the glass from her his hand missed. He had misjudged the distance.

'Spock, you can see,' Christine said softly. He wasn't sure if it were a question or a statement.

He took the glass at the second try and swallowed a mouthful of water before giving the glass back to her. He cleared his throat, and said, 'Yes, Christine. I can see.'

She gave a sound that was something like a sob, and flung her arms about him. She sat like that for a while, crying almost silently, and he stroked her hair, marvelling at the sight of the individual strands.

'Why are you crying?' he asked her softly.

'I'm so happy,' she said in a torn voice, releasing him finally.

He tried to sit up and dizziness assailed him, but he pushed it away, struggling up against the pillows. This was all incredible. It was too much for his mind to take in. There were the curtains around the bed, a vivid orange with a small pattern that he could not quite make out. There was the blanket on the bed. There were his hands. His _hands_. He raised them to his face, staring. Fingernails, fingers, lines on his palms.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Christine began to say, 'No, Spock. No, lie down,' but he ignored her and stood up unsteadily and moved to the curtain. He felt as if he were walking under the influence of drugs. He could not judge distance. He could not reconcile the sights before him with the physical space that he moved in. But he reached the curtain. As he pushed it aside he heard a gasp of joy, and then saw – _saw_ – Jim standing up, hurrying across the room with McCoy at his side. He was enveloped in a small maelstrom of arms as both men attempted to hug him.

'Spock, you can see!' Kirk was saying as McCoy said, 'It worked, Spock! It worked!'

He drew back from them carefully, clearing his dry throat again and saying, 'Yes, gentlemen. It worked. Was there ever any doubt?'

'Well, that's a Vulcan reaction if ever I saw one,' McCoy said in a disgruntled voice.

'You misunderstand me, Doctor,' Spock said simply. He felt alight with joy. He could not understand why that was not obvious.

'Yes, I guess I did,' McCoy said in a warmed tone. 'But I don't now.'

'Spock, what's it _like_?' Kirk pressed. 'How do you feel?'

Spock hesitated. He looked around at the large room. There was a row of beds on either side. He could count them. He could see the people in them, in those beds that had patients in them. Some of the beds were empty, some had their curtains drawn round. He could not see these things perfectly. He was aware that his vision was not yet 20/20. But he could _see_ them.

'I do not know how I feel,' he said honestly.

There was too much to take in. This meant so much more than the simple fact that he could see beds in a row, see faces, see floor and ceiling. It meant so much to his entire life.

He walked slowly and unsteadily across the room, Kirk, McCoy, and Christine crowding about him, hovering, not quite touching. There was a window at the end and he reached it and looked out. He could see snowflakes falling, individual and beautiful, from thick white clouds. There were roofs and trees lightly blanketed in snow. The world had incredible depth. He could see footprints on the sidewalks, people walking, skimmers moving along in the streets. When night fell, if the sky cleared, he would be able to see the stars.


End file.
